


Epiphanies and Processes

by Yuuhineko



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But he's trying, Diego Hargreeves is a dumbass, Empowered Vanya, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, No Beta, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Protective Klaus Hargreeves, Protective Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Protective Vanya Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, Stuttering Diego Hargreeves, Vanya is depressed, Vigilante AU, We Die Like Men, and were raised as family, but she's getting better, but they were so messed up they had to find each other again, does it count as found family, if they were all found by the same man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 08:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18847147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuuhineko/pseuds/Yuuhineko
Summary: The problem with the word epiphany is that what we call epiphanies rarely are. Usually, what we think of as a single moment is actually the result of a series of moments, a long process with one cataclysmic end. The result being that we can rarely accurately pinpoint just when we began to change.-----Or how in an attempt to preserve the timeline The Commission ends up screwing it all to hell.





	Epiphanies and Processes

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea when I was thinking about just how complicated time is, and people are, and thought about various ways it could have gone wrong. I'm also a big superhero fan so that's how this took the shape it did. I'm really excited with how this turned out and I hope you enjoy it! For reference, Vanya's costume has the same sort of silhouette as modern Donna Troy with the shoulder and knee pads, but with a material and headpiece that looks more like the CW version of Kid Flash.  
> Edit: Edited a couple hours after posting because I didn't like the formatting and didn't realize how AO3's Formatting system worked lol.

 

“Did you hear the rumors?” 

Even with the years since he last saw Allison and the subtle differences in this and her signature phrase, Diego finds himself shuddering at the words. He’s sat in the police precinct, checking in on (read: annoying) Patch. It was a slow day, had been a slow week on their end, but that was just because Diego had worked overtime to shut down the drug smuggling ring before it got anywhere near Patch or her squad. So what if he was a little concerned that they had heard something (AKA: worried that Patch had heard something and was going to get hurt) and came to check it out (and eat through their snacks), sue him! 

“Oh yeah I did, what a mess, boss had me triple check security on the record room, I thought he was gonna rip my head off when I said the tapes didn’t show anything.” 

“What are they talking about?” Patch stopped typing and turned to look at him before rolling her eyes. 

“Oh just some stupid rumors about a new vigilante.” 

“New vigilante?” 

“Hey, hey, hey now!” The kid who initially asked the question, last name Dudley based on his badge came over to Eudora’s desk. “Listen here, these aren’t just regular rumors you know!” 

“Sure they aren’t” Eudora’s tone was dismissive, eyes never leaving her screen. 

Seeing that half of his audience wasn’t very attentive, Dudley focused on the other half of his audience - Diego. 

“There’s a new vigilante in town- there is! They’ve been going around solving all of these cold case murders, no one knows how they pick their cases or how they solve them. All the criminals are just left tied up, ready to confess, with some evidence and a violin drawing. That’s what they’ve been calling them: The White Violin.” 

“And no one’s seen this ‘vigilante’?” 

The kids’ face lights up at someone even remotely interested in his topic of conversation - someone really needs to teach him about security and shit. “No! They’re always gone by the time the cops arrive. People are starting to think they have an inside man in the department - otherwise how are they getting all of the case details? People are getting kind of antsy about it.” 

“Well yeah, that info is for our eyes only, and here some unknown is running around with it.” Patch jumps in. 

“Yeah, but if they’re solving cases does it matter?” he offers, just to be contrary, and Patch levels a glare at him. Dudley beams at him despite the less than glowing support.

“See Patch?  _ Someone _ recognizes how cool this all is, it’s like the Umbrella Academy but in real life!” Thankfully he has enough time before the kid turns around to hide his grimace. 

“I’m Jim- uhh...James Dudley.”

“You just graduated, Jim?” 

The kid gets such an earnestly sheepish look on his face he feels a little bad about manipulating him. “Uh, yeah. That easy to tell?” 

“Just a little.” Then, just to put the fear of god in him, “you should probably get back to work before Mike gets back from lunch.” 

The kid visibly startles, then rockets back to his desk. 

“Just ignore him Diego, I’m sure this will all blow over eventually.” 

“You said yourself no one knows who this person is! This vigilante could be a huge threat!” 

“And what exactly are you, then?” 

“Th-That’s different!” 

“Is it?” Patch sighs, “Seriously Diego, don’t worry about it. They stay in their lane and you stay in yours.” 

“And what lane is my lane exactly, huh?” The teasing comes naturally to him, and Patch rolls her eyes and stalks off, “Seriously, I need to know what my lane is.” 

\---------------------------------------

Diego did mean to listen to Patch, he honestly did this time. Okay, so actually he got distracted by some arms dealers and totally forgot to look into the new vigilante, but still. Even if he had set out wanting to listen to Patch, he ran into the new suit either way at a gang fight on McMillan and 5th. It was a total stroke of luck - he had been headed towards a different crime scene that had been resolved while he was en route. Normally he would have been annoyed, but as it was it gave him the perfect opening. 

This new person definitely had the styling of a suit, the thick material definitely wasn’t normal leather. It was, however, white for some reason he couldn’t understand, did they want to be a walking target? Other than that the costume was pretty standard, mostly white with black boots, gloves, and shoulder, elbow, and knee pads. Instead of a domino mask they had a visor like thing that covered the upper half of their face, and pitch black hair. They were female based on height and body shape, standing at about 5’1 and very thin, but they didn’t let that stop them in the fight. Getting into the thick of it with 13 gang members, he could see her ducking and weaving between them with practiced ease, although her punches and kicks could use some work. 

With him on the scene, the fight was over in minutes. They both stood there panting for a while, coming down off the adrenaline high. 

“You weren’t supposed to be here.” For all that it’s phrased like a statement, the question is understood. He takes a moment to think it over anyway. 

“Saw you struggling and thought I’d lend a helping hand.” He goes for cocky, just to see how she’ll react. Her lips thin out, and he thinks he can see her eyes narrowing behind her visor, before she turns to one of the guys on the ground. She lifts him up by his collar and slams him against the brick wall. 

“What do you know about Philip Martouche?” 

“N-nothing!” 

“Oh really? Because a little birdy over at the overpass said that you would know.” She gives an over dramatic and petulant sigh, “that must mean that one of you is a liar. Oh I do hate when this happens. Now I have to figure out which of you is lying.” She drops him without any warning and he scrambles back. She does a visible once over the field of unconscious gang members. “I wonder if one of these guys could tell me who's lying…” she starts towards one of the guys, clearly a member of the rival gang, causing her victim to sweat. 

“W-wait!” 

“Yes?” 

“I might not…  _ know _ anything about P-Marsh, right? But uh, I might like  _ know _ somebody who knows something.” 

She smirks, “you better make it worth my while.” 

“I mean, and I don’t know anything for sure, but I heard about some kinda chatter bout a place in Houghton.” 

“A place in Houghton? You’re gonna have to get more specific than that.” 

“One of the abandoned warehouses! I don’t know which one!” 

“Houghton is the old packing district all it  _ is _ is abandoned warehouses.” 

“I don’t know which one! I swear!” 

“But?” 

The guy licks his lips, “but I know I guy who would.” 

She smirks like a cat that ate the canary, “names and addresses.” 

She gets what she wants, and Diego barely has time to get out “hey-“ before she has scaled the fire escape and is over the roof and out of sight. 

\---------------------------------------

The next week Phillip Martouche walked into the police station and confessed to the murder of Terry Herevia because Herevia, an employee at Martouche’s construction company, had discovered that Martouche was selling drugs to local teenagers. Herevia’s death had been labeled an accident by the investigators. 

\---------------------------------------

Whereas before Dudley had struggled to make anyone pay attention to his ramblings, now everyone was on high alert. This was more than cold cases now, the White Violin had directly showcased the incompetence of the police department, and had brought down a local philanthropist in the process. If the Chief had been concerned before, now he was positively livid. The main concern wasn’t bringing her in, oh no. As of yet she hadn’t done anything worse than what he had been doing, it was more that Diego was a known quantity in contrast to this mystery cape who was a complete unknown who apparently had a mole in the department. There was a standing investigation to find the mole, and even he (who the police had begrudgingly tolerated as a nuisance they knew wasn’t going away) was being enlisted to help discover the identity of the new suit. 

“This is your fault you know.” 

“How is this my fault?” 

Patch gave him a look that said she thought he was stupid, “she’s clearly following your example.” 

Of course, a couple weeks from then he got info that made him realize how true it may be, just not like Patch had thought. 

It was a bank robbery. Like all bank robberies he couldn’t help but flash back to the mission that had started it all. Of course, now he was older, and bigger, and he hit a lot harder, and basically left his team in the dust and was more than capable of handling it on his own. He was doing fine - really - at least until the back up showed up and he realized that this was a Bufalino family operation. That’s when she had jumped in. She had sounded the alarm, and when everyone was looking side-to-side for the new threat, jumped down on to two of the guys from the rafters. He was a little distracted by the alarm, and a little distracted by her too. She was fighting better than before, more of a practiced style than a string of moves. Still, most of the guys, sensing her the easy target, closed in on her rather than take him on. He couldn’t get to her through the guys gunning for his neck-

That’s when they all realized what happens when you assume. 

She saw the guys rushing towards her and placed her feet firmly on the ground, pushed her torso forward and  _ screamed _ . Only, instead of a scream coming out an almost melodic...tone came out that rattled his ribcage. At the same time a visible wall of energy pushed out and knocked the approaching men on their backs, unconscious. Startled, the men at her back hesitated a moment before charging her, which gave her time to whip and around and use her arm to generate another sound wave that knocked out the oncoming group of attackers. Recovering from his own moment, he quickly downs the remaining men leaving them the last two standing. 

For a moment they just stand there, alarm still blaring, sizing each other up. Whatever she’s looking for, she doesn’t find it because she runs out the door and leaves him standing there like a Prom Queen who's been dethroned. 

\---------------------------------------

He doesn’t know what to do with this information, so he goes to one of the few people he knows with common sense. 

“What the hell, Diego! Why exactly are you going around pulling me into random supply closets?” 

Despite quite literally yanking Patch in here, Diego quickly found his courage leaving him, his mouth stuck on the first syllable. 

“Well?” 

“Uh-uh. I.” He takes in a deep breath. Than another. 

“Diego” 

“At th-uh-the bank robbery the oth-ther night. The new girl. Sh-she’s like me. She’s got powers.” 

Despite the dark he can see Patch’s eyes widen, “Oh Shit.” 

“I think she may be one of us. The-uh the Fuh-Forty Three, uh, you know.” 

“Oh my god! What was it?” 

“I don’t really know, it was like she could make sonic blasts o-or something.” 

“Is that what caused all of those guys to get concussions? Legal was bitching like crazy ‘bout that, forensics just couldn’t make heads or tails of  _ how _ it happened.” She pauses. “You telling me  _ she _ did all of that?” 

“Well, I got a couple of ‘em” 

Patch rolled her eyes, then gave him a look that pinned him down, “should we tell anyone?” 

This is just one reason why Diego liked Patch: sure, she trusted the police, she believed in their mission, but she also understood that sometimes discretion was best. She was the first person who had seen him and his anger, and violence, and selfishness (and  _ hurt _ and  _ fear _ and  _ panic _ ) and hadn’t asked “How did it happen?” but “How do I stop it from happening again?” She was good like that. 

He sighed. “I don’t know what to do.” He gulped. He stayed quiet for too long to be comfortable, but Patch just let him collect his words. “Th-there’s a reason why I-uh I never used my power in the academy, okay? Dad, dad, dad he….used us. Manipulated us.” He couldn’t look at her anymore, he turned his head away ducking low. “Sh-she could hurt people, b-but telling everyone will m-mean. Telling. Everyone. I-I don’t know if she c-could handle that.” 

She takes a couple deep breaths, clearly thinking it over. 

“She hasn’t hurt any officers so far, we can barely catch sight of her most times. And she hasn’t given anyone anything worse than a concussion so far, and liberal property damage.” She sighs again, “But Diego…. You gotta find her.” 

“I know, I know I do. I know” 

\---------------------------------------

From that day on he was hitting the streets like it was going out of style, reaching out for every scrap of info he could find; rumors, anecdotes, whispers, anything. Someone looking in his apartment would think he was some kind of stalker. Maybe he was, but he wasn’t in this for himself, he just needed to know if she had a hold on her powers, and if she could handle the shit she would inevitably face for having them. 

Eventually he was able to figure out her MO: Like the early rumors said, she was really into solving ‘cold case’ murders, but that was just one part of it. More than that she was into catching people who were getting away with it. She didn’t care so much about the guy peddling drugs on the corner, she wanted to know the guys selling drugs out of their businesses, using slaves in their restaurants, using faulty materials in building repairs, landlords forcing residents to pay more. Crimes that people otherwise wouldn’t notice. It just so happened that murders labelled accidents happened to be a lot of those. She also did a lot of other, regular vigilante work; holdups, gang fights, car jackings. That actually seemed to be most of what she did, the homeless people had nothing but good things to say about how she stopped people from stealing their stuff. And the teachers at Heineman Junior were extremely grateful for how she had pushed the gangs away from the school.  

That meant that he now knew where best to find her. He still listened to the police scanners, but more and more he was hitting the streets looking for something to do. Honestly, now that he was doing it he didn’t know why he hadn’t done it sooner. It was...gratifying, in a way the other stuff wasn’t. He still liked to lend a hand when he thought the police were a little outnumbered, but...the police never thanked him for what he did. They didn’t run to him on the street corner to give him cookies for saving their grandma, they didn’t hug him for punching out their stalker, they didn’t offer that night’s leftovers for stopping a robbery. The gratitude...made him feel  _ good _ in a way nothing else had made him feel. 

And it was paying off, he was seeing her more. ….not a lot, but more. Every so often he would catch her in a fight and would lend a hand. He wanted there and then to corner her, but Patch had stressed patience. “C’mon Diego.” She’d said. “She’s cagey enough as it is, you gotta make her think it’s her idea.” And it was working, she started lending him a hand every so often, she didn’t even flee right away any more. Soon they’d worked their way up to witty banter. He could feel some kind of….camaraderie? Yeah, some kind of camaraderie building between them. It was only a matter of time before something pushed it over the edge. He just didn’t expect that push to be because  _ he _ fucked up. 

It was an abnormally tense situation, even for someone used to the Hargreeves definition of stress. There was a Pimp who kept his girls in one of the apartment complexes he owned - essentially a forced version of a brothel. He had been planning on moving on the guy for a couple weeks now regardless, but he was forced to move in ahead of time when the guy hired a bunch of thugs to force his other, not prostitute residents into a) paying up b) shutting up and c) using their daughters as collateral. He had some rough specs of the building, but hadn’t had enough time to do a thorough catalogue. It was sloppy, but he didn’t really have a choice. At least, that’s what he was telling himself when he was thirty guys deep and not even up to the third floor yet. One guy had come out of a room using some poor girl as a shield. He was more than capable of twisting his knife around the guy, but before he had a chance the guy was knocked out from behind and who else was standing there but the White Violin herself? 

“Y’know maybe running into a building of 70 guns without a plan wasn’t such a good idea?” 

“Hardy Har Har. I don’t see you coming in here with an itinerary.” 

“I didn’t need to, I already had a distraction.” 

He shot her a side eye, at that, but decided it wasn’t worth it and kept trekking up. Trouble came when some wise guy got that idea that, since the two of them were cutting through them like butter, they needed something to distract them. The fire alarms went off, and the sound was disorienting enough, but then the sprinklers came on and he could feel his world spiralling. That splash of water on his face, suddenly he was back in that god damned house with hands keeping him under water and it burned his eyes and he was breathing too fast or was he breathing at all? 

“-go? Eee...ego!” 

He thrashed but the hands weren’t letting him up, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds...he could feel his vision start to fade, he-he couldn’t. He couldn’t! 

“Snap…! Snap out of it! God fucking dammit!” 

Suddenly a slap knocked his head back on straight, and he came back to himself with the girl standing over him, wet and panting heavily. The look on her face was some primal cross between anger and fear, and later he would be touched that she was that concerned about him. For now he was in too much shock to feel much of anything. 

“God dammit, gotta get it together. And with that she hauled him up by his armpits and settled him on his feet. “You good now?” 

Absolutely not, he nodded anyway. She nodded back. And before he knew it she was off like a rocket, tearing into the guys with a vengeance. She didn’t hold anything back, using her powers to knock back whole waves of them, and beating others senseless. At that pace it didn’t take them long at all to reach the top where the boss was. She didn’t even bother with his guards, brushing them aside with a wave. She did choose to kick in the door though, and let him deal with the bastard himself while she checked his files. 

“You know, for a moment there I would’ve let you slide away if you had just treated your girls better, but  _ no _ , you had to get greedy didn’t you? Well, I guess it’s for the best, if you were willing to do this you weren’t likely to cooperate anyway.” 

“P-please don’t! Give me a chance!” 

“You had your chance. Now I’m pissed. Here’s what your gonna do. You’re gonna let the girls go, turn over the building, and turn yourself in to the police and tell them  _ all _ the awful things your doing and you’ll get three hots and a cot and an early parole, or  _ I’ll _ let the girls go,  _ I’ll _ take your building, and I’ll  _ force _ you to go to the police and tell them all the awful things you did and you’ll three hots and a cot and not have a cute little plea deal to save your ass. Or maybe I’ll just leave you on the streets like those poor girls you took advantage of, does that sound fair?” 

“I’ll turn myself in, I’ll turn myself in!” 

“You better, or else I’ll be even more mad if I have to track you down again.” 

He couldn’t tell because everything was soaked, but he thought the guy may have wet himself. Hah! 

“Who should he sign the building too?” He looked over at his partner, who already had a hefty stack of folders in her hands. “We can’t let him sign it over to one of his asshole friends who’ll do the same thing he just did, and if the city gets their hands on it they’ll evict all the residents and tear it down probably.” 

“Give it to Wanda. I mean, Miranda, her real name is Miranda, she’s one of the older girls here and was the one feeding me info.” V gave him an assessing look before turning the to bastard. 

“Miranda here?” 

The guy nodded. 

She gave that smile again, the one that made her look like she could take on the world. “Well then, good thing I found the deed in your filing cabinet over here, all we need to do is transfer it and get it signed by a lawyer.” Her smile said she already had people in mind who would do exactly what she wanted. The pimp had the absolute gall to whimper.  

\-----------------------------

After that, it seemed he could hardly go a week without seeing her around. He still didn’t know who she was, mind you, but they became an odd sort of duo. Whereas before their team ups were short and spontaneous and awkward, now she was asking for his help with a drug smugglers and local gangs and he was asking her for help with human traffickers and weapon smugglers. Sometimes they would just share information, other times they would work together. Sometimes they would even catch a bite after, sitting on the golden arches with an Oreo McFlurry, a Big Mac, and a large fry to split between ‘em. They set the police scanner on the roof with them, just to keep an ear out, but they mostly sit with the city as background noise and talk. Sometimes. 

They’re both still pretty reluctant to share personal details, and despite the reason  _ why _ he originally started to seek her out, he wasn’t too eager to share. Perhaps it was because he had realized that without the mask Diego was pretty...underwhelming. Or maybe he just didn’t know where the mask ended and Diego began. Maybe it was the same for her, or maybe she just had something worth hiding. 

_ (He still remembers one night, after they bust the owner of a small laundromat chain lacing drugs with stuff to become more addictive. He remembers asking “Where’d you get this tip anyway?” She Shrugs, “My brothers a junkie, I buy him food for tips sometimes.”  _

_ He thinks of Klaus then, he hadn’t thought of him in a while. He knows, well, he’s met enough addicts now to know that Klaus couldn’t help it, that his father was wrong with all the shit he said, but he’s surprised that in spite of that knowledge he hasn’t thought about Klaus more. Is he eating? Is he alive? Is he getting hooked on this extra addictive shit? What kind of person was he that he hadn’t thought of his own brother until now, god when was the last time he had checked on any of his siblings?  _

_ Maybe that’s why he asks it, to get away from his thoughts spiralling with nowhere to go. “Do you have any other brothers?”  _

_ Her mouth twists into something almost cruel, if it wasn’t so damn sad. ‘Less than I used to” she says. He drops it.) _

Still, they find things to talk about: the new homeless shelter downtown, the latest education policies, the new graffitti in Westwood, the weather. They don’t like sharing, but he does talk a bit about Patch, and she talks about Officer Dudley (“Jimmy”) and how he keeps popping up to ‘help’ her all over the place. They talk about what’s happened to so-and-so and how the repairs are coming along to this area and other stuff. It’s weird, of all the people who he could call friends, it seems it’s either because he stuck around and learned to tolerate him, or they decided to stick to him for some reason. He isn’t normal, he knows that, he doesn’t know how to connect with normal people. He’s never made a friend before, not the way people are supposed to, but...he thinks that maybe this is closer than he’s ever been. 

All in all this is the best he’s felt in a long time, which is strange. He has a purpose now, one where he can see the impact and results of his actions. He’s becoming a more functional person in general, he’s got an apartment now not under a boxing ring but in one of the tenements he’s helped out with some furniture that he was able to buy and not just whatever he pulled off the side of the road on trash day. He even has a ‘day job’ of sorts in getting people’s groceries for them and walking their dogs and other odd jobs. He’s volunteering with the Food Bank, and some of the police that know him better are asking him ( _ him! _ ) to come up with ideas for how to ease parolees back into society. He has a cell phone now, a burner, but Dora can call him now, and not just Dora but Richards and Burton and Reeve and god he’s getting lunch with them. And Mike told his grand-dad about him and now he’s helping his old man club with their car repairs! It seems like everyday he’s becoming better, learning something new, learning another thing he was taught that was wrong. Life was...life was good. Real good.

Of course, now that his life was in a better spot it was time to deal with some of the more...problematic parts of his life. Namely, his family. He didn’t reach out to Luther, not because of that childish rivalry, now that he was older he could see how much that relationship was based on his own insecurity and anger a-and  _ hurt _ . But the fact was every one of them could see how screwed up dad was, how fucked up their lives were - everyone except Luther. He recognized from his own life, from Dora’s patient efforts, that for someone as stubborn as Luther (and Luther was at least as stubborn as him) there was no changing him until he wanted to be changed, and he wasn’t going to open up that old wound if it was going to amount to nothing. 

But the others….sure he was nervous (scared) to reach out to the others, but at least he knew there was a chance. He starts with Vanya, mostly because she was the one he had the most info on (and wasn’t that kind of ironic - the one they all dismissed first was the only one who hadn’t forgotten them). He left her a voicemail with his phone number and an offer for lunch, eight hours later he gets a text saying ‘It’s Vanya.’ 

Followed by ‘thanks for the call.’

A minute after that he gets ‘It’s orchestra season right now, so I spend lunch hour in rehersal.’ 

Then ‘*rehearsal.’ 

Then ‘sorry’ 

Two minutes after that one he gets ‘I’ll be free in October though.” 

and finally 10 minutes after the last text ‘keep me posted, text me or leave a voicemail I’ll try to text back.’ 

He even thinks she may mean the last part. 

Then he reaches out to Klaus. Well...that may be wrong. He kept tabs on Klaus. He wanted to reach out, he did! It’s just. Klaus had a life, has a life. Had one before anyone else, had been  _ forced _ to because of how dad treated them (no  _ they _ how  _ they _ had treated him). And he knows  _ now _ that addiction is a disease, and that most druggies are good people dealing with a whole lot of shit, but that doesn’t excuse what happened before. It doesn’t. And now that he has a life….he wouldn’t want Luther or Dad just  _ invading _ his life as if they belonged there. So...he watches. He checks out all of Klaus’ dealers to make sure they aren’t too sketchy (thankfully it seems Klaus has a good sense for his dealers  _ thank god _ ), he makes sure he knows when Klaus goes with a-a-a John and will check to make sure he’s safe in the morning, and he’ll watch the clubs Klaus usually hits up to make sure he’s okay. One time when it looked like he was struggling he snuck $40 into his wallet. But, other than that he just watched. And waited. And tried to think of how to...make it up to him. 

By comparison, Allison was the easiest one to deal with; logically he knew that the chances of Allison contacting him in any meaningful way was slim to none. She seemed to have a happy life: a career, a husband, rumors of a child on the way. Still, he sends a letter to the latest address Mom had for her with his phone number and address and a life update. 

( _ Two weeks later while at Dora’s house he sees a preview for an interview on 60 Minutes. It isn’t the full thing, just a short blurb of “Well, family is more than a uniform and a piece of paper, isn’t it?” followed by that maddening ticking noise and he knows what she means but he hears what she isn’t saying, what the audience inevitably hears of ‘they aren’t really my family’ and god does it sting. Dora turns the TV to some medical drama with the fakest “Oooh new episode” he had ever heard. They don’t talk about it. He never gets a response back. _ ) 

He doesn’t do it out of any sense of generosity, more a sense of obligation, duty. It’s a bed he’s piled clothes on and now it’s time for spring cleaning as it were. He doesn’t realize what this must look like to others until one day over dinner Dora says “you know I’m proud of you, don’t you?” 

It stops him in his tracks; truthfully he hadn’t even thought of what she must think, about what the others must think of his change in character. He knows that he should feel good with what she’s saying, but he’s really too shocked to feel a whole lot of anything. 

“Seriously, I can imagine that all of…. _ this _ can’t be easy, but you’re being so  _ mature _ about it. After...after you got kicked out of the academy I worried, you know? You were so  _ angry _ and you had nowhere else to go, and then this whole ‘hero of the night’ shtick started…. But it’s really helping you, isn’t it? This vigilante stuff.” 

“Y-Yeah. It is.” The moment is suddenly emotional, and he can feel the words get stuck in his throat. He starts to clear the table so that he can hide the flush rising up his neck. As they sit down to watch TV, she smiles at him. He smiles back. It feels a little like victory. 

\---------------------------------------

Two weeks later, a month after the apartment fiasco, has him staking out a night club at 2AM. He’s pretty sure the main owner is using the club to launder money - there’s no way that the bar is making nearly as much as they claim they are without  _ something _ illegal happening. Not unless all their patrons are alcoholics. He just doesn’t know  _ what _ activity their using to launder, which is why he’s sweating his balls off, belly down on a roof in the middle of July. His operation is paused however, by the sound of a person landing behind him. He turns to greet V, but is stopped short by her appearance. She looks...crazed; dilated pupils, breathing fast, and more disheveled than he had ever seen her. He could even see where her extensions clipped in for God’s sake, and while he knew her hair was fake it must be real bad if he can see it. 

“It’s- those gun smugglers. In Houghton. Shootout. It’s-Its Jimmy’s squad!” 

His blood runs cold and his heart pounds all of a sudden. Jimmy’s squad was Patch’s squad. Shit. “Shit!” 

She takes off, and he’s following her before he can even think about all his stuff he’s leaving behind. 

“What the fuck happened, the buy out wasn’t supposed to happen until next Thursday!” 

“It still isn’t, they decided to move the cargo early, got a noise complaint. Police showed up.” 

Fuck. “Fuck!” They run faster. 

As he gets closer he can hear the gunshots. They land on the warehouse across from the base. He spots five guys outside shooting at three officers, one of which was clearly wounded. V takes off towards the warehouse, entering through a roof hatch. He throws a knife as he jumps off of the roof, down the scaffolding and onto a freight container. The gunfire hides his landing and his powers ensure the knife makes perfect contact with the leader’s shoulder joint, sending him down. The guys all point their guns at the sky, tracing his knife back. Perfect. He jumps onto one of the guys - knocking him out - while throwing a knife perfectly through one guy’s hand. Three down. The last two are pincering him, but it isn’t a problem. He throws a knife and knocks the gun out of his hand, then turns around and grabs the guy coming at his back, twists his arm till it’s pointed towards the sky and empties the clip then punches him in the face. Lights out. The guy is not scrambling for his dropped gun, but a kick to the gut and a punch sends him out. The guy he nailed in the hand comes up then with a crowbar in his non-dominant hand, but he’s easy to pick off. Shoulder guy is getting up then, which is impressive considering he can’t use that arm to lift himself and he must be in a hell of a lot of pain, but one of the cops shoots him in the knee before he can even stand all the way. 

“Diego!” He startles. It’s Burton, He was one of his teachers at the academy and is on Patch’s squad, so it isn’t a total shock that he knows who he is, but Diego isn’t used to anyone except- 

“Diego, it’s Patch! She went in!” His blood runs cold, he’s sprinting before he realizes what’s happening. He bursts into the warehouse ( _ maybe running into a building with 70 guns without a plan wasn’t such a good idea _ ) and immediately seized upon the first guy he sees, grapples him and smashes his head into the nearest box until he’s unconscious. Another guy is on top of him, punches him in the face, but he uses the proximity to grab him and knee him the guy until the guys gasping, then tosses him into box to finish him. Dumbass smugglers finally remember they got guns, and start shooting at him, sending him behind a crate for cover. He takes a moment to scan the room, Patch is across warehouse, taking cover but otherwise looking fine. V is taking on a circle of eight or so guys, not impossible with her powers. He needs to focus on the other guys. He checks out where his shooter is, and sends a knife hurtling at him - by the pained screech it hits dead center as always. He throws another two out to hit two of the guys sniping at Dora, then abandons his cover to get one of the guys stationed in the corner. He crawls behind the crates, sneaks up behind the guy, then chokes him out and leaves him in the corner. He knifes the guy closest to him, then slides over to where Dora is hiding. 

“Diego!” 

“Yeah?” He peaks over the crate, but ducks down as he gets shot at. That one’s a good shot, but a little too good today. He traces the shot back to where he thinks the gunman is and let’s a knife fly; it hits. 

“Diego!” Dora grabs his wrist. She looks him in the eyes. “I can handle the rest of them, you’ve gotta help her. Something isn’t right.” Concerned, he peaks past their cover. She’s knocked a couple guys out since he came in, but not nearly as many as he knew she could. Something was wrong. Why wasn’t she using her powers? One guy gave her an uppercut to the face, she spit out a mouthful of blood and kicked him in the gut. He thought back to before, how crazed she looked. He had thought it had been panic...but what if it wasn’t. What if she was concussed o-or something? Could she use her powers if concussed? Could she use her powers if she was panicking even? Ben and Five has been like that they needed total control- 

Shit. Shit, shit, 

“I need to get her out of there.” 

“I’ll handle these guys, go! Go!” 

Patch pops up and shoots the guy sniping from the other corner. Right in the sternum, that’s his partner. He runs out from behind cover and starts throwing knives at goons. Three go down before he makes it to the circle and starts kicking ass. V immediately falls back, which is concerning in itself, but soon he’s too busy taking on half the room to care. Now that eyes are on him and V instead of Dora, she’s in a prime spot to snipe. Two guys go down with a bullet to the knee, and one get a shot to the shoulder and is done in with a crack over his head. One asshole has a taser, he goes down with prejudice. The taser is useful though, and takes down another guy from the shock, and serves as a useful projectile. The last guy goes down with a crack to the head and he stands there  _ like and idiot _ and just breathes before remembering the reason he had to jump into this fight anyway. 

V is against the wall now, sitting with one hand clutching her hip, and a bloody nose and blood dripping from her mouth still. She looks like hell, in a word, and he rushes over. Dora runs across the room as well, coming to kneel in next to him. Talking to V kind of feels like talking to a wild animal. 

“C’mon c’mon, you gotta let me see it. I gotta see how bad it is.” slowly he is able to peel her hand away from her hip, and while he’s grateful to see it isn’t a full bullet wound, it isn’t great either. The bullet must have grazed her, but it sliced right through her pants and would definitely need stitches if the way it’s leaking it any indication. 

“Shit.” Dora mutters under her breath, reaching for her radio. He’s reaching for her wrist even before V’s quiet ‘stop’.

“The squad still needs you. As useful as the both of us are if we’re taken to the hospital we aren’t going to our homes when the nights done.” Dora just looks at him, but he knows he’s right - he can still hear the gunfire outside. “I’ll take care of it, I know people. Go.” She looks to V, then back to him, before standing up and going to her squad. 

He rips up a part of his undershirt, and puts it over the wound and holds it there using the parts of her pants that are still held together. Another section of his shirt is ripped off to act as a nose plug, when she reaches up and grabs his wrist. Her grip is weak.

“D-don’t. Take…”

“I gotta stem the bleeding. Your losing blood fast.” If only he had something to make a tourniquet with.

“No-not Pogo. Not Mom. don’t take me back there.” 

Despite his urgency, the words stop him in his tracks. It makes sense how Burton would know who he was, they were in the academy together, and Patch has often scolded him by his name, and so his identity is an open secret that way. It isn’t even inconceivable that V might have found out about that. But...only Patch knows about his  _ real _ identity. He’s only ever told Patch about his family, about that house and it’s demons. 

His hands are suddenly clammy, and he knows if not for the adrenaline already in his system he would certainly hear his blood rushing. With careful hands, he lifts her cowl over her head and- 

He doesn’t know what he was expecting - h-he guesses this, but even so it still feels like a punch to the gut, because this is  _ Vanya _ . Kind and sweet and gentle and  _ ordinary _ and  _ untrained _ Vanya. Starting at him with off-focused eyes, and a panicked expression with blood trickling out of her mouth and a bruise steadily growing on her temple. 

“Promise, Diego. You gotta promise.” 

“I-I.” he swallows, “You need a-a-a a doctor. I d-don’t kno-w h-how-” 

“Cory.” She reaches inside her belt and pulls out a burner phone. “555 Hayward, in Eveside. That- red brick ‘partment. Corner. Fir’scape. Third floor. She-” Vanya coughs, and the sound is so wet and ghastly that it dislodges something in his chest. Some kind of flight or fight response, only he can’t fight blood loss. “She- she’s my go to. You gotta pr’mise. No mom. C’nt…” 

He swallows thickly. He doesn’t know this Cory person, and he is way out of his depth here. He knows that Pogo and Mom would be able to help her, but...he knows he would rather go to the hospital than see dad again, and with her in the state she’s in it’s doubtful he  _ wouldn’t _ make an appearance, if only out of curiosity. He-he can’t find it in himself to say no to her like that, not with this. 

“I-I promise. No house.” 

She gives him a smile, and a shaky breath, and finally lets go of his wrist. He stops her nose, and picks her up bridal style. She wraps an arm around his neck, holding herself up as much as she can. It frees his arm well enough that he’s able to haul the both of them up to the rooftops, which makes traversing with her both faster and easier. Even so, the normal 25 minute trek to Eveside is made in a clean 14 (admittedly not having to worry about pesky things like breathing certainly helped with that). Thankfully, there’s only one set of red brick apartments on the corner of Hayward Ave, and only one set of fire escapes on the corner side of apartments. He lands on the third floor landing, startling the blonde woman making food inside. She spins around, wielding her spatula like a weapon. In a fit of humor out of place in the situation he knocks three times on the window - open in the July heat - and goes

“You Cory?” 

\---------------------------------------

It turns out that the woman was, in fact, Cory; short for Juliet Cornell the assistant coroner, which boy did that explain a lot.  

“I can determine whether I think the victim died of natural causes,” she says while stitching up Vanya’s bullet wound, “But the police don’t have to listen to me, a lot of the time they don’t.” Her face grows hard. “Vanya listens.” 

Despite being working mostly with dead people, she was more than capable of working on Vanya. 

“You were good to get her to me so fast, she was losing a lot of blood and was definitely concussed, but she’ll be fine. Out of the field for a little while, although probably not as long as I would like.” 

“Yeah, she’s like that.” He doesn’t know why he says it, ever since he found out who V was he doesn’t know how much he really knew her in the first place. He shouldn’t feel that way, he guesses, of the two he knows V much better than he ever knew Vanya, but….it’s impossible to know how much was a side of his sister he never saw before, and how much was an act to throw him off the scent. It explains why Vanya only ever talked to him over text, anyway (he may be stupid enough to forget the sound of his sister’s voice after a couple years apart but he wasn’t so stupid he’d forget it after a couple of days. He thinks.) 

But he’s not going to get his answers now, no matter how much he wants them. She was definitely passed out and would be that way for a while based on the beating she took. So he was just torn between his fear and sympathy for his sister, and his fear for his (good) friend. 

“I have work in the morning, so it won’t be good rest, but you are welcome to the couch, or you can share the futon.” He hums a noncommittal answer, unable to take his eyes off of V or focus on her words for long. He realizes what a mistake that was when a blanket hits him square in the face. 

“Just go to sleep.” and with that Cory goes to bed for the night. 

He doesn’t know how to feel, he was never the  _ gentle  _ one, he was usually the one everyone fretted over, not the one who did the fretting. This was an entirely foreign experience to him, he was only left with faded memories of mom by his bedside and what he had seen on those trashy medical dramas on TV, but he wasn’t about to fall over himself crying, or kiss her forehead, or flirt with the doctor, so that just left him awkwardly kneeling by the futon, rubbing his thumb across her split knuckles and waiting. 

\---------------------------------------

He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he felt his pillow move under him, and a hand stroking his head. He had fallen asleep literally bent over Vanya’s bedside, and god wasn’t that just domestic of him. At some point Dr. Cornell must have come through and draped the blanket over his shoulders. He straightens up, feeling every knot and crick in his back and neck as he does so, and Vanya gives him a bittersweet smile. He’s still clutching her hand even after falling asleep. 

“You probably have a lot of questions.” 

It’s just becoming light outside, he can hear the school bus pass on the street below them, and sees the pale light peaking through the blinds. 

“I guess.” He shrugs, trying to sound more casual than he feels. 

She smirks at him, he’s stuck on the little bit of blood still crusted in the corner of her mouth. “Don’t try to act so casual. I know you.” The thought of her knowing him so well for some reason has him embarrassed. “Well, this all started back in February…” 

\---------------------------------------

_ (The main problem with the word epiphany is that, very rarely are the things that we call epiphanies actually epiphanies. Most of the time the things that we call epiphanies are actually processes. As people we pin so much of ourselves on that one moment when it all made sense, the paradigm shift, but usually it isn’t one overwhelming event that changes our worldview. Usually, there are a series of events that nudge and nudge and nudge us, until finally the event that we call an epiphany comes along and pushes us over the edge. That’s what makes it so hard to actually tell what has affected us, when often we don’t even really know all of the things that brought us to where we are.  _

_ So while for Vanya her story starts in February, in reality it starts back in December, when her annual doctors appointment was rescheduled from Friday December 14 to Monday December 17th. This wouldn’t seem like such a big deal, and certain time meddlers certainly didn’t think so, except for the fact that December 17th was the first day the regular doctors at Vanya’s clinic started winter vacation, and the holiday doctor’s were brought in full time. So when Vanya goes into her appointment, and the words get stuck in her throat, her doctor doesn’t roll over her like usual. Instead she asks if she often has days where she can’t speak without a lot of work. Vanya nods. The doctor flips through her file for a while, lips pursing and brows furrowing. Vanya sweats even more.  _

_ “Do you know if you’ve ever been tested for autism?” Of all the questions she had been expected to hear, that was not one of them. She shook her head.  _

_ “This isn’t a diagnosis, mind, but a lot of what is listed here as parts of your anxiety disorder overlap with symptoms of autism. I see you have difficulties verbalizing, and sensory overload is described in your file. Can you give me a yes or no on some specifics? For example, do you have difficulties making eye contact? Difficulties understanding puns or certain phrases, and do they aggravate you? Do you have difficulties understanding different tones of voice such as sarcasm.”   _

_ Vanya thinks of how she always feels a bit like an alien wearing human clothes; how even in her own home she felt like she never really knew anyone. Her ‘irrational’ hatred of soft textures, like oatmeal and avocado and pudding. The way she never managed to understand the poetry lessons no matter how hard she tried. How she can’t seem to sleep without making a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich for a brother that was never coming home. But...those were just habits. Everyone has habits. They weren’t anything more than that, weren’t they?  _

_ “I’m going to refer you to a psychologist that will be able to better assess what can be attributed to your anxiety disorder, and what may be the result of something else, from there we can work out a treatment plan that works best for you.”   _

_ So an appointment was made with the psychologist in the first week in January, where they equivocated and wiffle-waffled and said a lot about anxiety and how different disorders overlapped-  _

_ “But I think there is enough to merit a diagnosis, although to put too much blame on that diagnosis would be premature without more observation.”  _

_ She leaves that appointment with a referral to a therapist, a new note in her file, and a follow-up appointment two weeks from then to review management strategies and medications.  _

_ But she doesn’t tell Diego any of that. For Vanya, she starts her story at a therapy appointment in February.  _

_ In another time, a different therapist would tell her that she couldn’t move on because she didn’t feel heard, because no one believed her or understood her anguish. She would say that she needed to cut toxic people out of her life, make people (the world) understand just what they did to her. The next night after miserably fucking up an audition she got so drunk she could barely see straight and wrote a manuscript that would isolate her from her family and make her feel more exposed than she’d ever felt before.  _

_ Instead, this therapist (“Call me Vanessa”) says, “There are unresolved issues surrounding your homelife and each of your family members. There’s a lot of hurt here.” She looks at Vanya with a sympathetic gaze. “What do you want?”  _

_ “I-I.” She falters. Takes a breath. “I-don’t want to hurt anymore. I’m so….tired. I’m tired of being tired.”  _

_ “There is no fix-all solution to your pain; recovery is one step at a time, and more often than not it’s one step forward two steps back. You understand?”  _

_ Vanya nods. “What. What would you recommend?”  _

_ Vanessa views her with shrewd eyes. “I think we should start by resolving your feelings with the least complicated of your relationships. Who would that be?”  _

_ It takes her a while to answer. “Five and Ben.” An odd expression crosses Vanessa’s face then, something sour, but by the time Vanya starts puzzling it out it’s gone.  _

_ “Then let’s start there. Tell me about them.”  _

_ And Vanya did, stiltedly, quietly. Ben and Five, the best of them, the first to understand just how wrong everything was in that house. Five, always proud, the only one to notice her (but not enough to take her with him), and gentle Ben who tried to hold them together and ended up tearing himself apart. Vanessa listens for the whole thing, before suggesting that she find her own way to memorialize them.  _

_ “Maybe you just need to find a way to grow closer to them...lay their spirits to rest as it were.”) _

“So that’s when I started at the dojo.” 

Ben hated training, but he still did it. He worked until he was in pain and exhausted and aching...for them? For dad? And Five...he loved to push himself. He had so much pride in his ability, loved to train (on his terms). She didn’t have any abilities. 

“But I figured that even if I hated it, then at least I would understand a little of what dad put you through.” She gets a- sad and happy look on her face. He thinks it’s called bittersweet. “But I didn’t hate it. I loved it a lot. For the first time in my life I had control, even if it was over my own failure. You know, in an audition there are so many things that can go wrong that aren’t your fault...the room’s temperature could change, the judge could know another auditioner, they could not like how I dress, they could not like my interpretation...I can’t help any of that. There’s no politics in breaking a piece of plywood with my bare hands.” 

And, unlike them, she actually had a good teacher. 

“His name was Matt, and he was one of the best people I’ve ever known.” She tells this story of this outstanding guy; a veteran who opened up a dojo when he had no other options, who gave discounts to young girls for self-defense classes and would walk them home when they wouldn’t feel safe, who volunteered at soup kitchens, who let homeless people sleep in the gym. 

“He was the first person to ever  _ see _ me. Who looked at me and saw something worth paying attention to...worthy of the space I occupied.” 

The accusation hidden in that statement stings a little, but she isn’t wrong and he doesn’t try to convince her otherwise. Instead he does what no one has done for her since Five, maybe since ever, and he listens. She tells him all about Matt. She started in his general self-defense class, then also started in his Krav Maga class, then Aikido, and soon she was staying after class to learn a couple new moves here and there, and then that turned into staying behind to chat, then going out to his usual haunts. And suddenly they were friends. Their lives were crossing over, she didn’t have any friends to introduce him to, but she would play her pieces for him. He didn’t have many friends either, but he introduced her to one of his buddies from the army who owned a bar downtown, and she started volunteering with him at the soup kitchen. It seemed like overnight they were almost living out of each other’s pockets. 

And then he died. 

“A heart attack, they said. A heart attack in a 30 year old man, with no history of heart disease, who was a vegetarian and exercised  _ as his job _ .” 

“Stranger things have happened.” 

The look she give him has all the sass of V and none of Vanya’s quiet distance. “And stranger things have happened then someone murdering someone and making it look natural.” 

“Why would they? He seemed like an upstanding guy.” 

“He was, but upstanding guys can piss off a lot of people, mostly bad people. And if people are willing to, I don’t know, bribe the police to over-criminalize homeless people so that they can profit off of private prisons then they are probably also willing to kill someone to ensure they can continue doing it.” 

She’s not wrong. 

“That’s how I met Cory, she did his autopsy. He went into cardiac arrest, but she found nothing that would have caused it to happen naturally. She found some kind of lingering substance in his system, but not enough to identify what it was. The police said it was steroids, but there were no signs of long-time steroid use, and the effects didn’t quite fit it either…” Vanya trails off, looking distant. “They police refused to investigate. Cory then came to me, asked me if he used steroids. She shouldn’t have, there was no reason for her too, but...she had a bad feeling. I have a bad feeling.” 

“And so you decided to look for his killer.” It wasn’t a question, but she answers it anyway. 

“I figure that , if you can get away with murder you don’t just do it once. And maybe they don’t slip up this time, or the next time, or the time after that. But eventually someone will slip, and if I take out the right block the whole tower might come crumbling down.” 

_ (For her, it always came back to Matt. He was the person that saw her not out of an obligation, or because she was the only one there, but because he saw something in her. All of her confidence, her newfound self-esteem she gave credit to him. And because she considered him the cause, the commission didn’t look any further back. They thought that his death would break her, would send her back into that lonely wraith she was before. Instead it forged her. Baptism by fire, as it were. Reborn through tragedy.  _

_ And that’s how the commission screwed up the timeline in their attempt to preserve it.) _

\---------------------------------------

“Now what about your powers?” She looks surprised that he brought it up, and boy does that sink his sense of his observation skills. “I know that I’m not the most observant, and I haven’t always paid attention to you-” and wasn’t that an understatement, he hadn’t even noticed that the person he was eating with every week had the same build, hair color, and voice as his own sister, “but I didn’t just forget how you can knock six grown men on their asses without moving a muscle.” 

She has the audacity to look embarrassed. She wrings her hands together, and he doesn’t know if he should be relieved that she has kept at least that gesture from their childhood. “I...don’t really know that much about them. They just started up a little while after I started. It has something to do with sound, I just hear something and I just like...push out. Kinda. And then it makes some kind of energy.” 

“They just showed up?” He can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “Dad...he tested us for years. All of those tests, all of that time and they just showed up one day?” 

“Yeah.” Based on her expression, she is about as satisfied with that answer as he is. He doesn’t remember  _ all _ of Dad’s tests, but he remembers how exhausted he would be after. He remembers trying crazier and crazier things to try and find his powers. They were only outmatched in ridiculousness by the actual training for their powers. Maybe it’s some sort of lingering belief that his father was always right, but the idea that he did all those tests and never caught anything was just a little unbelievable. But...if he did find out and let her think she was ordinary, made them all think she was ordinary was. That was beyond cruel. (But did he ever take her for those tests? He couldn’t remember. Allison hadn’t figured out exactly what words she had to say until they were seven, was he even testing Vanya then? How was he so sure she was ordinary? How was he so certain she would  _ never _ get powers?) 

Still if he found out that she had powers now….it wouldn’t be good. Regardless of if he missed it, or-or ignored it, or they had developed late Reginald would  _ freak out _ . 

He was freaking out; for all of his life Vanya had been the weak link, always anxious, always depressed, nothing worth saying, nothing to contribute. He was able to see that it was wrong, but he hadn’t done anything to stop it, to fix it, to apologize. And here she was, such a good person no thanks to him. She succeeded not because of him, but in spite of him. He didn’t know what he was feeling, he couldn’t keep track of a thought long enough to know what he was thinking. But...he might not know what he wanted to do, but he knew what he could do, what he should do. 

“Well, I’m not a millionaire, and I’m no Mom or Pogo, but I think I can figure out a way to train them up.” 

“You’re...not gonna tell?” The uncertainty in her voice takes his mind back a couple years, to when they were talking about peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and late night donut runs. He wouldn’t tattle back then, he knew, not out of charity but because Vanya wasn’t worth it. He wouldn’t even take bribes for her silence the way Klaus would. He feels the sudden need to explain himself, to make her understand. 

“We’ve already lost one decade to that maniac, I’m not keen on losing another one and I bet you aren’t either.” He tries to play it nonchalantly, but with the way she smiles she probably saw through it. 

It isn’t an apology, not really. It won’t heal their wounds or stop the aching. But...maybe it can begin to mend the rift between them. Maybe it’s a start. 

\---------------------------------------

After that he was seeing Vanya three, four times a week  _ outside _ of costume. He may not be living at the gym anymore, but he knew how to badger Al into giving him a spare key for the off hours. Vanya is genuinely busy with the orchestra, but she manages to find the time before rehearsals or during breaks to pop over and practice. They aren’t experimenting with her powers, one because that word gives him hives after hours spent held down in a tub for the sake of ‘science’, but mostly because there was no sense in pushing the limits when she didn’t have a firm control of her current powers. Just the other day when she turned the volume up on the noise she was using she accidently whammied him all the way across the room, and left him with a nasty set of bruises that didn’t fade for a week and a half. Still, from then on she started working on picking out softer sounds, at picking out one sound from a lot of sounds, and making energy blasts from her own sounds rather than seeing just how destructive she could be. 

“Um, excuse you they are  _ sonic _ blasts. Or sonic screams I guess, that works too.” 

“What the hell is this, Transformers? We aren’t telling anyone any of this what does it matter what we call them?” 

“If it doesn’t matter, then you won’t mind calling them sonic blasts.” He gives her a flat look, and gets a shit-eating grin in return that could only have been copied from Five. He rolls his eyes, and doesn’t think about how much he prefers her sassing him to the emotionless, agreeable Vanya of the past. 

( _ He also doesn’t think about how satisfied he feels. Finally he has a sibling for himself, the way Klaus had Ben, the way Luther had Allison. He has someone just for  _ him _ and maybe it’s about fifteen years overdue, but he’s the only one who knows this side of Vanya and it feels good. To be in on the secret for the first time.) _

The aren’t suddenly partners in vigilantism or anything, despite the time they spend together. When it comes to their nighttime jaunts they still do their own things, but they don’t hesitate to work together now. Instead of finding each other in the night to trade info, now they exchange details during their training, or over lunch and they meet up at the beginning of the night. Not partners, but...co-workers. And then, of course, when they do team up they are working far better together than they ever have before. Training together for even just a couple days a week has them working like a well oiled machine, in a way the academy never managed. And so despite the reality of the situation, people are sensing that something has changed, that they’re closer. It seems they can’t go a week now without one of them getting a message for the other (and on one occasion, a batch of homemade biscotti). They split them while sitting on top of a bar he kicked some assholes out of, both nursing lattes while the bar closed up. 

Maybe he’s in denial, or maybe he’s just oblivious, but he genuinely doesn’t know why everyone thinks He and V are in each other’s pockets until Patch makes an offhand comment while cleaning up after dinner. 

“So are you going to be meeting up with your hero crush tonight?” 

He knows it’s a joke. He knows she means nothing by it. That doesn’t stop the sheer panic that overtakes him, and he drops the plate he’s washing. 

“Diego? You alright?” 

No. no, no, no, no, nononononon- 

“Nononononono-”

“Diego! Chill out, it’s a joke!” 

“People don’t think that do they!” he grabs on to Patch’s biceps and searches her face for an answer. Her expression doesn’t actually change, but he still reads the worst and curses. 

“Oh my god they do!” He let’s go of her and runs his hands across his face. 

“Diego it’s not a big deal!” 

“It is a big deal! I’m not Luther! I’m not like Luther, oh my god.” 

“I know, okay! I know you’re not like your brother I know! Just chill out!” 

He finally manages to bring himself under control, although still flushed from the exchange. 

“Sorry, I just….it set me off. Sorry.” 

“Yeah, I could tell.” 

“It’s-uh, just uh…., you know uh…” he stopped. Took a deep breath, willed the ‘uh’s and ‘um’s away. 

“Just forget about it, I don’t need to know.” 

He breathed a sigh of relief. 

Of course, ‘I don’t need to know’ only lasted until they were watching the latest episode of the doctor show (Gray something or other) when she suddenly connects two and two and goes, “Wait a goddamn minute, Luther is the one fucking your sister? Why would you be concerned about dating the Violin if she isn’t your sister?” 

He doesn’t say anything while he processes the accusation, but it’s clear he’s been silent a beat too long when she immediately reaches for a suitable weapon to bludgeon him with, in this case the otter shaped couch pillow he bought for her at the aquarium on their six month. 

“Um, uh, tragic childhood you know how it is. Look at the time, gotta go!” 

“Diego you son of a bitch! You can’t avoid me forever!” 

He hated it when she was right. 

\---------------------------------------

“Look, I know why I’m in the shitter with my girlfriend, but what did I do to piss you off?” 

“Wow, I didn’t know that you hated your family so much. Are we really just a punishment to you?” She says it sickly sweet, but he can see the smirk trying to break through her expression. Traitor. 

“Traitor” 

This time she does let herself smile. “Pouting? If anyone should be pouting it’s me, you haven’t even done any work!” 

“Oh, so dealing with family is  _ work _ now? Didn’t know you hated your family so much, sis.” He snarks back. 

“Hey, love ya but you all are exhausting. Which is why you should be a dear and follow up on that lead for me.” 

“Yeah, I really don-” 

“Oh you will? How sweet!” She steamrolls right over him and is already jumping away. “Thanks bunches dearest!” 

“Hey! Hey! I didn’t- You owe me one!” She’s far away and getting farther, but her laughter still echoes back to him. He allows himself to pout a little, because she isn’t here to tease him about it and lord knows he wasn’t allowed to pout like this when he was actually a child. So he sits on the roof and sweats bullets and fucking waits for his stupid mark, ugh V owes him one for this shit. 

And there he is, stumbling out of the bar, clearly on his way to another. Gangly limbs stumble and trip over themselves the way he’s seen a million times before, and of course his mouth is running a mile a minute at some hallucination. 

“I’m sorry I called you a spoilsport before, this is really a great idea I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it myself. What was that? This isn’t your idea? Well then, I don’t know where-AAAAAH” Klaus startles and jumps like a cat, and maybe he shouldn’t feel good about that but he’s always been what Eudora will call a ‘Little Shit’ and if he’s being forced into this crass form of family bonding he’s going to take some joy out of it. 

“Oh jeez, haven’t you ever heard of a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down? Well, you wouldn’t, would you? Dear old papa was never one for the _nonsensical_ _inane chatter_ that was Walt’s masterpieces. You would like it, real Carol Brady/Julie Andrews vibes going on. That’s still your thing isn’t it? Clearly you’re still into the whole Hot Topic-Dark-Broody vigilante bit, although the rebranding is a nice touch. Big fuck you to dad. What were we talking about? Oh right-” 

“We were talking about how I was going to buy you dinner.” It surprisingly causes Klaus to stop talking, which Diego will take for the mercy it is. “I’m going to buy you dinner and you will tell me everything you know about those kids disappearing in Naz.” 

“Ooooooh,” He does not appreciate the glee which fills Klaus’ tone, “I was wondering when you would muster up the nuts to come and talk to me yourself instead of send your lady love after me. While I am touched you thought of me - and I will never turn down the offer of free food, do not misunderstand - it does hurt that my  _ dear dear brother _ would rather send his people-” 

“She’s not my ‘lady love’ or whatever. I have a girlfriend, even if she is pissed at me right now. And before you say shit I’m not looking for any side action, either. Especially not with V.” He pauses, collects his thoughts. Klaus was always good at derailing him. “And I didn’t send her after you either, I didn’t know she knew about you until a couple months ago. Whatever reasons she has for this arrangement-” that she is entirely too sentimental and is still attached to siblings who never gave a shit about her (although Ben cared didn’t he? And Ben cared about Klaus, god damn it focus!) “-are her own and she hasn’t shared them with me.” 

Klaus has the strangest expression on his face, the closest to genuine joy Diego has seen in a while. 

“So...She wasn’t doing it because you told her to?” oh god damn it now he was getting sentimental. Shit. Vanya really fucking owes him one for this because now he fucking  _ cares fucking hell _ . 

“No, no I didn’t tell her to.” Suddenly uncomfortable, he looks away to try and hide his fidgeting. “So..dinner. Should we uh…” 

“Oh! I want McDonald’s! Chicken Nuggets! A-a-a twenty piece!” Klaus looks to his side, as if someone was there and says “Does McDonald’s have a twenty piece Chicken Nug meal? Oh well, Chick Nugs, Chick Nugs, Chick Nugs…” 

“Yeah, Yeah, let’s just, uh, get a move on.” 

“Hey what was that you said about a girlfriend?” 

Diego took a deep breath. This was going to a long night, and lord bless it his family may be exhausting but they were his. 

\---------------------------------------

“Now that wasn’t so bad was it?” 

He turns around and puts on his best scowl, even if his heart wasn’t in it. “He asked me about my sex life.” 

“So he was Klaus?” 

“He asked me about my penis grooming routine.” 

“An addition to your hygiene rituals that I’m sure Officer Patch would appreciate.” She dodges the right hook he sends her way, and comes up with that damn smirk on her face. 

“Chill out Diego, he’s asked me about my preferred ‘Shaving patterns’ and he doesn’t even know we’re related. That’s just Klaus.” 

He sighs. “Yeah. It is isn’t it?” 

“Didn’t seem to bother you too much when you continued to sit there after he gave you the info you wanted.” 

He shrugged. “Felt wrong to leave him is all.” 

Her expression soften a little, her smirk softening into a one-sided smile. “You know, when you aren’t shoving your emotions up your ass you aren’t that bad of a guy.” 

He snorts. “You flatter me.” 

“Don’t get used to it.” She smirks, “if I’m not careful it’ll go to your head.” 

“Oh yes, because Miss ‘I-can-shatter-glass-with-my-mind’ is the model of humbleness.” 

“Pretty sure it’s humility, and that my legal name has less words and more numbers.” 

“Oh buzz off!” 

She cackles again, and makes a buzzing noise with her lips which she uses to kick up a breeze to play with his hair. 

“Let’s just get to work, alright?” 

\---------------------------------------

He doesn’t think about Klaus again until he spots a news headline at the bar with the boys about a week later. 

“The White Violin and The Black Dagger expose Child drug ring run out of local arcade.” 

Rebranding. Huh. Who knew that rebranding could feel so good? 

\---------------------------------------

Everything is fine. Like, actually pretty fine. He and Eudora are out of their on again/off again and are firmly ‘on’. He has a steady job now, working as a mechanic for a member of the old man club since “even if you’ve got shit for brains your arms are the size of tree trunks and that’s fucking useful. And even a monkey can do an oil change!” Or so he said. Vanya has a permanent position with the orchestra as 2nd Chair 3rd Violin and she’s started doing solo gigs at that bar Matt’s friend runs playing the medleys and remixes she likes. He’s started taking his police buds there too, and it is almost comical how wet-behind-the-ears Jim Dudley has a crush on Vanya  _ and _ the White Violin. And with his powers of observation gained by watching Vanya for seventeen fucking years he can tell that she is actually starting to take him seriously. Sometimes. Kid’s still a bit of a dumbass - but he’s a funny, honest kind of dumbass and his hero worship of the White Violin and his honest adoration of Vanya is clearly warming her up little-by-little. Crime rates are down, and life is looking up. 

So of course that’s when things start to get fucking hoaky. 

“What now?” 

“Someone is trying to bait me into a trap.” She grips her coffee a little tighter. They’re at her apartment, which isn’t uncommon nowadays but is still a little odd. “These leads came out of nowhere, and are conveniently coming from all of my usual sources but aren’t really connected to any of the usual channels. And it’s a little too, I don’t know, a little too up my alley. A group using laced drugs to secretly murder people and get away with it. Except, If they are  _ that _ good why am I hearing about them from a bunch of druggies on the streets and not any of the people I’m busting for, you know, actually killing people and getting away with it? And how would any of these people know their motives anyway? Selling laced drugs is a thing that happens all the time. Killing people and making it look like an accident is a thing that happens all the time. But if they are killing all these people, how can anyone know if it’s intentional murder, and not a normal overdose because they sold shit that was too addictive.” 

“You know how rumors get in those circles, maybe some guy embellished his story a bit and it spread?” 

She’s shaking her head before he even finishes. “I have too many different sources saying similar things for that. This isn’t a game of ‘telephone’ - the story isn’t getting anymore outlandish. They are all just saying the same thing. It’s like multiple people started the rumor at the same time, it hasn’t had the time to get out of hand yet.” 

His hands clench up, and he forces them to relax. He’s a territorial person by nature, he admits it, and the idea of someone coming after his sister makes him fucking  _ pissed as hell _ . “What are we gonna do about it?” 

“That’s what I’ve been struggling with. They’re going to be prepared for me either way, and unless they’re idiots they are going to be prepared for  _ us _ . We need to have some element of surprise, we can’t just assume our skills are going to overcome whatever trap they have for us.” 

“But how do we do that when most of our backup comes from each other.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Any ideas?” 

She grimaces, “A couple, but you aren’t going to like them.” 

She’s right, he doesn’t. Unfortunately, the idea is so crazy it might just work. 

\---------------------------------------

“You want us to do what?” 

“You have to pretend like I’m going on a sting with you.” It’s his regular lunch with the boys at the pub near the station, this time with Patch tagging along. He feels a little bad springing this all on them without any warning, but if these people are really trying to flush Vanya out he can’t assume they don’t know both of their identities. He can’t assume they aren’t watching him all the time. So he sticks to his schedule, and proposes his plan to them when he’s sure no one's listening. “The only way they won’t assume I’m with her or tagging along somewhere is if they are absolutely certain that I’m somewhere else. The best way to do that is to- to fake an emergency. Anyone who knows me knows that when you guys get in hot shit I’ll come running. We just have to...you know. Act a bit. Play it up.” 

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.” 

“Neither do I, but it’s the only way to guarantee it.” 

Mike looks at him with shrewd eyes. Mike’s a good guy, a lot older than him, served in Afghanistan. He put together that Diego was the Black Dagger all on his own and didn’t say shit. “We might get in deep shit over this.” 

He nods. “I’m asking for a favor. For sure. But...it’s either this or run in and pray to god that me and her can take it.” 

“I wasn’t saying no. I was just-this is dangerous Diego! I’m worried. I-you should be going in this with a whole squad as back up, not just you and your partner and powers and fucking lady luck, alright?” 

Richards nods. “Yeah, this is real fucked up. You’re walking into enemy territory when they are expecting you and just hoping you come out the otherside in one piece.” 

“They won’t  _ be _ expecting me if we pull this off.” 

“And if we don’t? Nuh-uh, you need more back up, I’m going with you. I have Wednesday off I can-” 

“No way, Dora. You’re too close to me for that to work. If the others were in danger of course I’d come, but if it was you nothing would hold me back, not even V. We’re laying a trap for myself here, you are too good not to use.” 

“Here’s what we’re gonna do.” Mike leans in, and Diego realizes that this is his business face. He’s at a team planning meeting right now, and instead of Mike who gets his grandparents’ groceries and helps with the old man car club he’s seeing Capitan Mike Hudson for first time. This is what he missed out on when he let his dumbass pride get him kicked out of the academy. “Thursday’s light staff, perfect time for the crew to get itself in some hot water, also perfect for back to get there in time should we actually land ourselves into some hot water. Where’s the base of these guys located Diego?” 

“In Naz, close to Houghton. There are a bunch of abandoned tenements there.” 

“Perfect, Reeve, didn’t you just get some intel that those arsonists were hiding out in the packing district?” 

“Yeah, that’s on the opposite side of Houghton though, closer to the docks.” 

“On the rooftops going at top speed I can make it in about 30 minutes.” 

“Enough time that if we call out a distress you’ll be close enough to make it and far enough that they won’t have guards the whole length. So we have our supposed target. What’s the emergency.” 

“I got an idea, remember that shooting last December? Where the guy staged a fire and shot a bunch of firemen?” 

“Great idea Patch. We go for a sting on the arsonists, turns out they are armed and dangerous and we weren’t expecting it, send up a distress signal. Diego comes running.” 

Burton shoves a couple fries in his mouth. “Who’s gonna be the back-up? We are not letting Diego go in there by himself.” 

“I’ll be fine guys, I just need the distraction.” 

“Absolutely not. I was thinking Richards could go. You were in the Coast Guard and you are good at hand-to-hand. You can follow in behind the Violin and Diego will be ready with projectiles from outside.” 

“With all due respect sir, I think you will be a better choice. You were in Afghanistan, and if this is a trap I don’t think my meager hand-to-hand skills will cover. We going to need a good sniper, able to follow White through the whole damn building and cover Diego’s dumb ass when he inevitably jumps in.” 

“Hey!” 

“I’m the captain, I should be with you guys fake sting or no.” 

Reeve speaks up next. “As captain your job is to look out for the whole team. We’ve got each other, but Diego needs someone good watching his six.” 

Burton nods, “I agree with them, lord know this knucklehead needs all the help he can get.” 

“Please Cap.” Patch looks Mike in the eyes, “I don’t trust anyone with this more than I trust you.” 

They all stare at each other for a moment, and for all that they call Diego a part of the team, he feels oddly like a child they are all talking over. Maybe that’s what being part of a team means in a way, that when you do stupid shit they’ll look out for you whether you wanted it or not. Actually, thinking about it that’s exactly what he did with Vanya. Fuck, maybe he really is a part of this team. Finally, Mike seems to back down, nodding and taking a sip of his drink. He leans back in his chair and gives him that calculating look again. 

“Tell your girl to scope out a good vantage point for a sniper when she goes to stake out the building. As for you, I know you’ve put in some work since the academy, I’m gonna need you to tell me exactly what I’m working with here. And don’t leave shit out, I knew you fucking lied on your forms you crazy fuckin-” 

\---------------------------------------

It was weird to have to act a certain way in the field. He was used to being more natural in the suit than out of it. Normally, he would have to pretend to just be a regular mechanic’s assistant. Your average, run-of-the-mill retired superhero turned good samaritan. He and Vanya were just siblings trying to reconnect, he and Patch was just a rocky relationship on a good patch right now. At night was when he could be angry and sarcastic and punch the shit out of criminals while his snarky sister becomes more terrifying every single day. But now that he has to put on a show for this whole scheme to work it - it feels wrong. He can’t wait for this to be over. 

Sure enough at 1:33 the call comes in over the radio. 

“We’ve got a situation in Houghton at Donnelly and Welsh! We need back up, now!” It’s Dudley on the radio and for a second he worries about whether there is an actual issue, but he shoves it down. Trust. 

“What’s the situation?” 

“Suspected Arsonists. Four subjects. All armed and dangerous! Captain’s down and we’re stuck.” There’s a pause allowing for a smattering gunfire in the background. “Patch is stuck with Captain inside. Shit!” 

It’s exactly the phrasing they agreed upon, it was surprisingly clever to use Jim for the scheme - he doesn’t seem like he could trick his way out of a paper bag. He gives a look at a Vanya, she nods her head, and he makes a mental note to praise her for keeping her shit together after this is all over. 

“I’m on my way.” He puts the radio back in his belt and turns to Vanya. “You sure about this?” 

“They need your help. I’ll be fine, go!” 

He sprints over the rooftops, hoping that he looks panicked enough to be convincing. Thinking back to that night when Dora was actually in danger it sends enough adrenaline through him that it feels real. He goes to the meet up point and is relieved to see Mike already there. 

“Everything alright?” 

Mike gives him a wicked smile, “Absolutely peachy.” 

That’s all they do for small talk, they don’t have time to waste. 

\---------------------------------------

Vanya knew before this all went off that there are two ways this trap is going to be set up; there is no way someone went to all that effort just to get her here to try and kick her ass. So they either must want something out of her, or they want her to react a certain way. So there are two ways that could play out by her estimate: one is they want to use her so they’ll send their best guys to kick her ass, or two is that they want her to react a certain way or want her to do something so they’ll send guys to wear her out and bring her guard down so that they can maneuver her to where they want. She is gratified to see when she gets in that they have gone for the second option - they wouldn’t do that if they suspected that she had caught on to the trap. And if they thought she was unaware of the trap they were more likely to be fooled by Diego’s feint. Perfect. 

She is careful to save her energy while fighting through the cannon fodder they send at her. She also is careful to hold back, which isn’t easy to do at the same time. It actually takes a decent amount of skill to be able to use these guys against each other, to keep track of all of them at once, see the guy going at her with a gun, pull forward in just the right way where he shoots his friend whose coming up behind her. All while restricting how much of her abilities she showed. It was kind of fun, if not for the existential fear of whatever the hell it was she was walking into. 

It was a three story apartment complex, clearly built a  _ while _ ago based on the narrow staircases. That did make it useful to funnel a subject (in this case her) up to wherever they wanted. Unfortunately for them, that made it easy to predict where they would funnel her ahead of time, especially since the buildings across the street were built with the same layout. Diego’s position across the street has a clear shot straight into the main room on the third floor. She plays the fool, let’s them think she’s playing into their plan. She makes sure to kick in every door she comes across, just to be thorough. It wears her down maybe more than she should be allowing, but hopefully it will buy enough time for Diego to get into position. And maybe these people will overplay their hand if she takes too long. Probably not, but one can hope. 

There are more men guarding the final door - an almost comically obvious indicator that that is where she is meant to go. She still checks out the other rooms on the floor for shits and giggles, and find them completely empty. She takes the time to think through her options, she could kick down the door, which would leave her a  _ more _ open option for retreat, but would also mean Diego would have no cover if he came up from the bottom. Then again, Diego could just zipline in through the window, and Diego didn’t really give a shit about things like  _ cover _ and  _ tactical flexibility _ anyway. She kicks in the door. There aren’t any people standing in front of the door, what a shame. That just means the guards are standing on either side. She doesn’t fuck around with it and throws a tonfa through the wall, firmly whacking one guy on the head. The bait is successful and both of them come running out of the room at her. These guys are clearly not fucking around, they have a mad on for her now that she aggravated them, but unfortunately for them she isn’t exactly inexperienced. The first thing Matt taught her was how to take down an opponent bigger than her, and she has had plenty of experience with taking down Diego in their spars that she knows exactly what to do. These guys are clearly used to fighting with guns, and while they are better at hand-to-hand than the guys downstairs it is still not that hard to get them off balance. One guy goes for a kick to the gut, which is really just an excuse to go down low and knock him on his ass by upsetting the one leg he has on the ground. The other guy thinks this is a great opportunity to use his vantage point against her, but now she has two tonfa sticks and is able to get a nice gut shot in before he’s on top of her. She rolls back to get a little distance, and while both of them are recoiling they are far from down. They wait for her to move, clearly expecting her to rush in or stand up or something, but she doesn’t. If she runs at them they have the time to think of a counter, whereas she already knows ten ways to counter from this position just from practice, and could probably do more from instinct. “Make them come to you” she remembered. “In a fight anything can happen, but it isn’t all spur of the moment. Good fighters practice and train, they know how they’ll land if they move a certain way, and they know how to follow through. So long as they come to you, you won’t have to guess at what to do next, you’ll know what to do.” 

But of course for all of his wisdom Matt likely never anticipated someone shooting her marks from behind; clean headshots, almost too clean. For a moment she thinks it is Diego’s police friend, but they know better than to show their hand so soon. Instead from inside the room a sickly sweet female voice calls out. 

“Well that’s enough of that riff-raff, isn’t it?” 

The time for charades is over, she stands up and stalks into the room. And stops. 

Oh. 

“A smart girl aren’t you? Smarter than we gave you credit for.” The woman, with unnatural blonde hair done in 50s waves puts her hands on the back of the chair holding down Klaus, who is staring at her with pupils blown wide. “Tell me, how did you know there were guards inside the room?” 

Vanya swallows, but won’t let this woman see her falter. She fails. Because those are her brothers tied up there, that’s  _ Five _ there, alive and dirty and  _ way too young _ . He’s older than when she last saw him, but by no more than three years at most. He’s emaciated, if he had been older there would have been excess skin from where his muscles had been eaten away to preserve himself. As it is he’s clearly been like this for a long time because his arms look to be about the size of a plastic bottle. He’s straining against his bonds, but with as weak as he looks there’s no way it’ll work. He’s covered in grime from head to toe, and is still wearing a shredded up Umbrella academy uniform. Whereas Klaus hasn’t stopped screaming at her through his gag this whole time, Five is completely silent. Instead he’s looking at her as if she’s a desert oasis and he has run out of water. As if he has to drink up every bit of her presence while he has it. This is the real trap, no matter how much planning she did she would never be able to prepare herself for this. All she can do now is try and control her reaction. She defaults to snarky.  “There were at least ten guys on the outside. Nothing worthless has ten people guarding it, and nothing worth anything will have guards only on the outside.” 

The woman chuckles, “True, true. Quite an astute observation.” She grabs Klaus’ shoulders now, bringing his chair on it’s back two legs so that he is closer to her without her having to lean in. “And? Is this worth guarding?” 

“You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” Vanya has to restrain herself from stepping further into the room. There are four guards in the room still alive, all in matching black suits and fucked up animal masks. If she hadn’t known before, this is clearly some kind of organized, experienced operation. She knows that the second she moves into the room they’ll move to block the door, and as it is her odds of beating four of these people at once by herself is slim, and that’s not even counting the ring leader. “What do you want?” 

“What makes you think we want something?” 

It’s bait, to make her reveal her thought process. She doesn’t fall for it. “Are you saying you don’t want something?” 

“Well…” The woman is hard to read, almost expressionless to Vanya’s eye, but she can see one of the guards tensing up. Clearly she has thrown them off their rhythm. “I would be lying if I said we wanted nothing. But it’s nothing  _ from you _ , you see, in fact it isn’t a bother at all. Quite the contrary.” 

“If it isn’t a bother you wouldn’t need the blackmail.” 

“That’s such a nasty word, plebeian in fact. I prefer extortion, much less hamfisted. And it really isn’t a lot of work, in fact it’s a lack of work for you. You see, we have a bit of a timeline, and well, you’ve been stomping all over it with these nightly escapades of yours. We just want you to...stop. No more need for training, no more sleepless nights or naps on the backstage couches. Just content yourself with your music and your family.” She strokes Klaus’ face to emphasize the point. “I even did you the favor of reuniting you with your long lost brother! Now you have nothing else to look for!” 

“And what’s stopping me from kicking your asses right now and taking my brothers, huh?” She realizes it’s a stupid fucking bluff as soon as she says it, and the woman senses it too smiling like a shark. 

“Oh, you think you could? You are certainly welcome to try, but well-” She stabs a needle into Klaus’ shoulder, causing a yelp of pain, “You remember Matthew Patreas don’t you? Wouldn’t want these two to end up like him, don’t we?” 

Vanya’s reaction is immediate and visceral. Her fists clench up, her jaw tightens, and she has to take a deep breath. “You-you killed him.” 

“Oh no darling, me getting my hands dirty really is unusual. But I do know who did, and we run in similar circles you see. I can point you to him, if you’d like? One last encore for the White Violin,” Her perfectly manicured hands tighten into Five and Klaus’ shoulders “but only if you agree to the terms, of course.” 

She has to be careful here, she can’t get into a prolonged fight when this woman can end her brothers’ lives with a simple injection. She needs to go down before anyone, but that isn’t happening with all of these guards in the way. Not with her still acting hostile. “Matt’s killer, you know who they are, you know where they are?” 

“Oh yes, dearheart.” 

“And you’ll tell me. Let me bring him down?” 

“If that’s what you want, although you won’t get these two back until after, you see. Collateral and all that.” 

“And you won’t come after us if I stick to your terms? No changing the terms later?” 

“We don’t need much from someone like you, just your agreement that you’ll stop this fighting nonsense, that you’ll stop training  _ entirely _ . You could even pick up Yoga if you wanted, just no more of this vigilante nonsense.” It’s an unusually hostile comment to make, considering the tense negotiations. What did she mean  _ someone like her _ ? Was it- did she think she was ordinary? Did she think Vanya still thought she was ordinary? 

Vanya pauses, let’s the woman think that she’s won. That’s a trick she learned from watching Pawn Stars of all things - when the person pauses for a long time it means you’ve won them over. Instead she uses the time to think strategy. They don’t know that she knows about her powers, she can use that. But first she needs to get her brothers to safety. “First take the syringe out of Klaus.” 

“You first.” 

Vanya takes a step back, takes her belt off and kicks it to the corner of the hallway. Then does the same thing with her Tonfa. “Now you” 

The woman obliges, yanking it out of Klaus’ shoulder at an angle that certainly wasn’t painless judging by his grimace and yelp. Vanya steps back into the room, and this time goes all the way in and lets them close her in. 

“You aren’t getting them back until after you put it up for good.” 

“You can have them while I’m hunting for his killer, but right now I want proof that they are alright. Consider it a sample to prove to me that it’s worth it.” Vanya puts on a smile that she hopes says ‘indulge me’. Either the expression works, or the woman is overestimating her hand. Likely a little bit of both. 

“Hands behind your head first, and on your knees. Can’t have you trying anything funny now can we?” 

That is the woman’s first mistake. If she had been reading Vanya’s fighting skills at all she would know that Vanya is more than capable of striking out from this position. She used it in this very floor, within eyesight for god’s sake! The second mistake she makes is dragging Klaus’ chair towards her, instead of going to him. That mistake would be her last. The sound of the metal chair scraping against the floor is much louder than what she needs for something as precise as this. Vanya focuses in, feels her power  _ course _ through her, and before the woman can do anything a blast of concentrated energy is rushing forward, slitting her throat. Klaus’ chair rocks forward  _ hard _ , and without any way to balance himself he tips over on his side. Meanwhile the blood spray has gone everywhere, causing Five to flinch a little as the blood hits the back of his head. The guards are in motion before the woman’s body hits the floor, but her backup is a little bit faster. One guard goes down with a headshot to the skull before his hand is fully on his weapon, a second one has a knife in his shoulder not long after. Diego follows his knife through the window, sending glass all over and conveniently kicking one of the guards on his way in. That’s when the real fight is on them. These guys are not fucking around now. They have guns out and are going for killing blows. In such close quarters it would be easy for one of them to shoot Klaus or Five, accidentally or no. They need to disarm them quick. She picks her mark, the one in the blue bird mask, and goes for a strike for the solar plexus. He dodges, but now she’s in such close quarters that they aren’t using their gun, and she can follow up on this. She tries to sweep their legs out from underneath them but is instead met with one of their legs coming up to meet hers. The retribution puts her off balance, and she has to abandon her close range advantage in order to retreat. Thankfully, now that she has already blown her hand, she can use her powers as much as she wants. She screams and creates a blast that knocks the guy back a couple feet and puts him on the defensive. He has distance now, and intends to use it if the way he brings his gun up is any indication, but that’s a move she has exploited many times before. She’s moving before he’s entirely recovered from her scream, and she’s able to grab his gun midmotion, twist it sideways, and follow up with a sucker punch to the jaw. He recoils backwards, and she’s able to use the motion to twist the gun out of his grip, breaking his wrist in the process.

The pain gives him focus, or it makes him fucking pissed because suddenly he’s fucking gunning for him. On the defense, she is struggling against his superior height and weight. He may be injured, but she is tired from having to ram through all the cannon fodder on the way up here. She’s in her last wind and she needs to end this now. It isn’t ideal, but she can’t get caught with her battery at zero. She plants her feet and unleashes a scream loud enough to rupture the man’s eardrums and knock him out cold.  

\---------------------------------------

Diego. Diego was furious. He was livid. He had never been this angry or anxious or-or scared in his entire life. Because those were his  _ brothers _ in there, that crazy lady had snatched Klaus without either of them noticing a-a-and she had  _ Five _ . Every instinct inside of him absolutely  _ raged _ . He wanted retribution, and he needed to get that crazy bitch  _ away from his fucking family _ . 

“Hold it together Diego. You can’t blow her cover.” 

“She’s got my fucking brothers.” 

“You have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.” 

Diego knows this, does trust her. But he swears if she doesn’t save one of those fucks for him he’s gonna lose his shit. 

He watches anxiously as Vanya gets into a fucking standoff with these psychos. It takes every ounce of self-control he has to not throw all of his training out the window. Instead of watching Vanya or the guards or the crazy lady he focuses on his brothers. Klaus is shivering and shuddering with the fear and withdrawal, and there is a sheen of sweat clearly visible even from their position. The fact that he is already in withdrawal says that they have had him for a while, which just goes to further piss him off. And then. And then there is Five, who somehow still looks like a teenager even though he should be their age and Diego should be weirded out by that but he’s actually insanely grateful because after this he is not letting that damn child out of his sight and now he has the perfect excuse. It’s so strange looking at Five with the eyes of someone older than him, in his memory Five is always fearless and prideful and unmovable. But now as a 22 year old looking at a 14/15 year old he can see all the places where the masks comes apart. For all that Five is sitting up straight and isn’t shaking like a leaf, he is a little too still to be natural, and ever since Vanya stepped into the room he has been gripping the arms of the chair for dear life. He’s doing a good job of holding up, but he’s clearly scared. The thought of Five, scared out of his mind and too proud to show it, sends simultaneous waves of sadness and rage through him. 

“What’s she doing.’ The woman has stabbed a syringe of-of something into Klaus’ shoulder, although she hasn’t pressed down the plunger. 

“I don’t have a clear shot with the hostages in the way.”

“Shit!” 

“I can take out the guard first but I can’t guarantee she won’t be able to inject him by the time I have a shot ready.”

“Prepare to do that. But don’t shoot yet, we have to trust that she has a plan.” 

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then we have to trust that she can stall her long enough to get off the shot.” 

Mike doesn’t say anything, just adjusts his aim. In some ways he wishes that Mike had challenged him: he knows it’s stupid but whenever Luther questioned his judgement it would make him more sure of his judgement. The silence is somehow the worst outcome. He doesn’t have time to think about it though, because soon Vanya is disarming herself and what is she doing!

“What is she doing!”

“I’m ready for the first shot. You tell me when.” 

The woman takes the syringe out of Klaus’ shoulder. 

“Wait for my mark.” 

Vanya is kneeling to the floor, the woman grabs the back of Klaus’ chair. Diego can tell what is going to happen before it happens. Vanya’s hair floats on a non-existent breeze, and by the time the woman realizes she’s made a mistake her throat is already cut open. 

“Now now!” Mike takes the shot and the guard goes down with a textbook headshot.  

Diego follows that up with a knife, and then follows his knife by grappling over and smashing through the window, which is when the fight really begins. 

His knife had gone up to the hilt into the one guard’s left shoulder, which was a weakness he was perfectly willing to exploit. He aims a kick to their left side, which they have to turn to block, but the nature of the block makes their footing off balanced. He is fully prepared to punish it, but then the third guard is at his back rescuing his pal from his wrath, the asshole. These guys are surprisingly skilled and composed, considering that they are down half of their men and their leader is bleeding out on the floor. It’s clear that whoever these fuckers are they have been trained to be a cut above the usual thugs and muggers he deals with. Still, he’s faced worse odds than two on three. He takes out his knives and lets his anger take the reigns. There is no use for guns in such close quarters and they both seem to realize it and they don’t even reach for them, instead using fucking billy clubs they pulled out of goddamn nowhere. He blocks them with his knives at first, but finds that between the two of them the constant back and forth of strike-block was getting a whole lot of nothing done. He aims a roundhouse kick in the general direction of the asshole behind him, which doesn’t connect but does give him enough space to pull out his finger knives. He lets them fly, aiming for kneecaps and shoulders and palms; he would go for the throat but he really needs answers and four of these damn bastards are already cold on the ground. 

Vanya screams another one into submission. Make it five. Oh wait he’s still breathing, not dead then. Perfect. 

He controls his knives to distract and corner the two guards while he goes in for the kill. The one with the shoulder injury is easy, he grips the handle of the blade and  _ rips _ it out with a satisfactory amount of tissue damage and blood loss. He then stabs the blade into the shoulder again, this time twisting it so it damaged the bone. The pain distracts him, and with him unable to use one of his arms the next steps are predictable; he backs up, turns his left side away and tries to punch with his right. Seeing it coming before he moves, it is more than easy to dodge under the punch, duck into his personal space, and cut his throat. The man isn’t even on the floor before he’s turning around to deal with the other, only to find him dropping to the ground from a chokehold courtesy of Mike. 

He motions to the body, “What was that?”

Mike gives him his ‘bitch please’-iest look. “You were taking too damn long.” 

“Deigo! Diego, knife!” 

For a stupid second he thinks Vanya’s telling him he misplaced one of his knives - a common occurrence when they were children - until his brain cells convert from battle mode to thinking mode and he realizes she is asking for a knife to cut the zip ties holding down Five and Klaus.  

Mike, because he’s an asshole, just nods his head towards the whole family unit thing going on and says “Forget something?” 

Diego does rush over to Klaus, but not before glaring at Mike just because. Mike just lets out a bark of a laugh and walks out, because he’s a jerk but not that much of a jerk. 

He takes out two knives, one to cut Klaus free and one extended towards Vanya to do the same for Five. 

“Klaus? Are you doing okay?” He would be embarrassed by how handsy he was being with Klaus, except it was clear from his expression that he was too shell shocked to talk shit. 

Klaus swallowed. “Yeah, yeah I’m…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, instead he rubs his shoulder where the needle had been stabbed into him and looks over at Vanya and Five. 

Vanya has already cut Five out of his restraints and removed his gag, but Five hasn’t moved at all. Vanya is squatting to avoid looming over him, one hand on his shoulder and another on his hand. Five isn’t reacting to that at all, instead he is scouring her face , searching for - for something.  

“V-vanya? Is it…?” 

He can see Vanya’s mouth tighten up in a way that Diego knows means she’s close to crying. “Yeah, yeah I’m...I’m here.” 

Five with his free hand shakily lifts up her mask in a mirror of Diego’s gesture just a few months ago. Whatever he sees there undoes the wall of apathy he’s been holding up, and he launches himself at Vanya in a way that leaves her with all of his weight. Vanya deals with it like a champ despite her exhaustion, slowly lowering the both of them to the floor. Five is holding on to her like someone who has never been hugged before (because he probably hadn’t been honestly); his grip is all lopsided, and a little too tight, and he has no idea where to put his head or his hands or his legs. His knobbly knees jut out as Vanya settles him half in her lap, his head coming to bury in her shoulder. Diego feels the pull to join them, and maybe at one point his pride would have kept him away, but right now he’s fucking missed his brother and was worried out of his goddamn mind and so he’s going to fucking be with his family. He sidles up behind Five, putting one of his hands on his back and keeping a steady rubbing motion that Patch did with some of the kids at crimes. Klaus joins him on Five’s side, bundling him up in a human knot. With a hand on his back he can feel the way Five’s heart is pounding, can feel the irregular breathing that gives away his sobs. Vanya cards a hand through his hair, and Klaus moves Five’s legs to be more comfortable and wraps his arms around Vanya and Five both. Five doesn’t make a sound throughout all of this, just quietly sobs and shakes, but slowly his breathing evens out and his muscles begin to relax. 

Their family isn’t whole, it might not ever be whole again, really. But, this is as whole as it has ever been, and that has to count for something. 

\---------------------------------------

In the aftermath, they go to Vanya’s apartment to lick their wounds. 

(“You shouldn’t have to open up your apartment to all of my police buddies, we can just go to my apartment.” 

“They already know my name I don’t care if the know where I live.”

“They’re my friends you shouldn’t have to put yourself out for me.”

“Diego you don’t even have a couch - you have a loveseat and a kitchen counter with some barstools. Fuck off.” 

He fucked off) 

Vanya is on the couch with Five,  who is swaddled in a giant fluffy blanket and munching on a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, tucked under one arm and Klaus, who is wearing one of her nightgowns, resting his head on her shoulder. Cory is fussing all around Five and Klaus and Vanya and him making sure they didn’t injure themselves too badly. The squad came by a couple hours later, after they had booked the guys that had been left alive. 

“He’s dehydrated...their both dehydrated actually, and generally malnourished. But there’s nothing I can do about that other than yell at you for it.” Cory deadpans.

“Can I consider myself yelled at?” 

“Since I have work in three hours? Hell yeah you can consider yourself yelled at. Call me again in a couple days, unless you almost die again.” 

“Will do.” 

They all wait in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time after Cory leaves, just looking around to see who would go off first. 

Richards, ever the pragmatist, finally pipes up while munching on a chocolate chip cookie, “So...the future, huh?”

His nonchalant tone is apparently some kind of trigger to send Burton off. “Yeah! What in the literal hell is going on?” Burton starts pacing anxiously, it was kind of adorable honestly how confused he was if it didn’t mean Diego had to rip open the curtains on all of the skeletons in his closet. “He-” he gestures to Five “is your brother that has been missing for 10 years? But he’s only three years older? And from the future? And your sister is the White Violin? And she has powers? And these people didn’t know about it? But they wanted to stop it? And they assassinated her boyfriend or something? And you! You’ve got powers too? What the fuck?” 

“Technically all of my siblings have powers, not just my sister.” 

“What. the fuck. Diego.” 

He sighs, then points to himself, “Umbrella Academy. Kraken.” He points to Klaus, “Seance” He points to Five, “The Boy”, He points to Vanya, “Sister that wasn’t allowed to fight because dad was an extra dick to her and there is probably a lot of shit behind that which I  _ do not want to fucking know _ .” 

Burton just kind of sputters for a bit, then turns on the rest of the squad. “How are none of you reacting to this?” 

Eudora gives him a deadpan look and says, “I’ve known since before I graduated from the academy, you’re just behind.” 

Richards says “Those words meant, like, nothing to me, we didn’t get TV at boot camp.”

Mike pipes up next, “I was also deployed, but my kid  _ loved  _ all that Umbrella bullshit. Mostly I’m just finally understanding why Diego is one fry short of a Happy Meal.” 

“Hey! I’m not dumb, I’m just….”

“Dumb.” He glares at Vanya, but his glares stopped working on her like two months ago so she just shrugs. “Diego. We’re fucked up.” 

“Yeah, but you don’t gotta say it like  _ that _ .” 

“And you kid? You got something to say?” 

Dudley quite literally shakes himself out of whatever daydream he was having and goes, “Wha?”

“How are you not literally freaking out over this?” 

“Oh, I will. I just know the time and place. Trust me, when I get home I will be plenty embarrassed at how I talked about my one crush with my other crush who are definitely the same person all in front of her brother.”

Burton throws his hands up in the air in the most melodramatic thing Diego had seen since Allison had moved to LA. “How are you all so unconcerned that our dumbass is a superhero?” 

“Hey he was our dumbass first.” Five’s sarcasm is undercut by how he is swaddled is a oversized blanket, but Diego is so grateful for the spark of personality that he is able to ignore the insult. 

Patch looks at Five and smirks at him, “Oh he’s  _ your _ dumbass then? Where is my $15 an hour for babysitting?”

“Woah, I never said he was still ours, just that we had him first, it isn’t my fault you all adopted him.”

“So what is this some kind of joint custody thing?” 

“We get nights you get days?” 

“Only if you pay child support.” That caused Vanya to burst into some truly nasty cackling that wouldn’t be out of place in a super villain, which only made Dudley crush harder the absolute fool. Klaus let out a wheeze of a laugh too, although it was hard to say if it was at Patch’s joke or at Vanya’s ridiculous sounding laugh. For an instant Five’s mask breaks down, revealing a little bit of the overwhelmed child underneath, but he quickly shores himself up and even gives a small smirk that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Speaking of joint custody,” Richards pipes up around a second cookie, “what are we going to do with the munchkin?” Five bristles, but again the effect is ruined by the blanket and the way he’s leaning into Vanya’s side when she tightens an arm around him. 

“There is no way he’s going back to that house, no way in hell.” 

“Technically, Reginald Hargreeves is still his guardian.”

“And technically Five Hargreeves is supposed to be 22.” Vanya’s face is stony, this is the part where it becomes harder to tell where the White Violin begin and where Vanya ends, “I don’t think the  _ technicalities _ are going to know how to deal with time travel.”

“He needs to have documentation, we can’t just ignore all the technical stuff because it’s uncomfortable.”

Surprisingly enough it’s Dudley who speaks up, “People were fine with ignoring the technicalities when a rich man bought seven children and sent them to their deaths.” 

His voice wasn’t loud or particularly demanding, but the statement is said with such cynicism that it momentarily stuns the room. 

“B-b-between the four of us in this room we have enough evidence to put that man in jail fo-for the rest of his life.” His stutter frustrates him, but he can’t let him steal his words away. He takes a deep breath, visualizes the words and starts again, “B-but we couldn’t then, because - because we were children, and he - he made _sure_ th-that we didn’t know enough to know what was wrong, t-to know _how_ to ask for help. And now we _s-still_ can’t get him. Because he’s rich. B-because we’re famous. Because we’re old. They...If I said h-h-how he would - ho-old me under the water for-f-for _hours_ th-they...they would say I was looking for _attention_. They would say I-I was _making it up_. And I _don’t have proof_.” 

The squad’s faces are stony, Burton looks fairly murderous. If his siblings are surprised they don’t show it; Five is looking at the floor, expression unreadable, Klaus is looking shiftily from side-to-side, like he wants to fidget but not daring to move, and Vanya just looks resigned. Of course, she already knew. She already knew about most of the family’s dirty laundry, just because no one considered her important enough to throw her out. She already knew exactly what they did to him, and to Ben, and to Five, and Luther, and Allison (although she had bitched to him once over a drink that she had never learned what he did to Klaus because it was off the property and she wasn’t allowed outside). She had seen him break down with the sprinklers in that stupid tenement, she had already come to terms with all of their horrors. 

“He - it...It was hard enough to do handle it when we were all together, there’s  _ no way in hell _ I am sending him back to that hell hole alone. No way.”  

“Well let’s just hold on before we get ahead of ourselves here.” Burton walks over to Five and squats down so that he’s at eye level. “Do you  _ want _ to go back? Or do you want to stay with your siblings?” 

Diego desperately wants to say something, but he realizes what Burton is doing. Of course it would be him - the only one of them with kids - who would realize the importance of Five’s choice. Looking at him now he could see in the tightness of Five’s expression how it was wearing on him to be talked about like a thing. 

“I. I want to stay. With them. I don’t want to go back.”

Mike looks back at Diego with a serious gaze, “If you can tell me how we’re getting him documented  _ without _ that asshole I’ll do it, but as much as I can do for you with police shit, I don’t have anyway to effect any of this.” 

“Well...Vanya said it earlier didn’t she? He always has  _ some _ documentation, it’s just for a 22 year old. Maybe he can’t attend school like normal, but GEDs aren’t exactly uncommon. If anyone questions him he says he’s homeschooled. And if he gets his GED by 18 or so he can even attend college like normal.”

“And what if he wants to get a driver’s license? There’s no way anyone will believe he’s 22!”

Patch gave Reeve a flat look, “The twerp can teleport, why would he want to drive?” 

“I wish I could fucking teleport, my commute is hell.” 

“Oh save it Richards you live 20 minutes away! I live in goddamn Brookwood!”

“How is it my fault you decided to give your Wife the picket fence suburbia fantasy?”

“It’s workable.” Mike grimaces, “It’s not a great plan, but it’s workable.”

“And you know, once he hits puberty it’ll just look like he’s baby faced, not that he’s 6 years younger than he should be.” 

Five mumbles something that sounds like “baby faced looks fucking stupid” except it is muffled by the way he has buried his head in Vanya’s side and the idea of Five muttering childishly is so different to his memories of the mature boy he was that Diego almost doubts his own ears. 

It proves some kind of signal for Burton, and for Vanya although he thinks that’s more a residual knowledge of Five rather than any parental instincts. 

“That’s all of the pressing stuff, I think the rest can wait until morning.” 

“Burton?” Burton inclines his head towards Five, whose eyes are drooping. Reeve has a look of revelation. “Oh, right it is late. Have to get home, get started on my paperwork.” 

Vanya gives a half smile, “I’m not sure my cookie stache will survive much longer if you stay.” 

“I’ll just have to bring some by to make up for it.” 

“Appreciate it.”

They all trail out the door, all except Patch, but Diego snags Mike on his way out. “Hey, just. Thanks.” 

He doesn’t say anything, just nods and walks down the hall. 

When Diego closes the door, Vanya has gotten up and is coaxing Five to start to move. “...I don’t have a guest room, so you’ll have to bunk with me tonight.”

“That’s fine.” 

“You sure?” 

“‘m sure.”

Eudora pokes him on the arm to grab his attention. “He gonna be okay?” 

He puts them out of his mind for a moment and turns to Eudora. He has a response on his lips but...stops. Pauses. Eudora...after everything she’s done she deserves an answer with some thought. 

“None of us are okay. Our dad purchased us like an Art Van Sofa. But this? This won’t be what gets him, this is nothing compared to the violence from the academy days. What’s gonna get him is not knowing how to do the laundry, or go grocery shopping, or how to sign up for a library card.”

“Well then it’s a good thing he has you.” She says it like a statement, but he feels the question in his brain. He looks at her for confirmation, and she looks back and smiles. That’s the best thing about Patch, she is able to answer questions he doesn’t ask. Like some kinda kickass psychic. 

“Yeah, I suppose so.” 

\---------------------------------------

So here is how it shakes out: 

Five lives with Vanya full time. He’s oddly cooperative of the whole situation, which is unexpected for the arrogant Number Five but both he and Vanya are too grateful to question why he is fine with them peering in over his shoulder. He flitters about like a ghost for about a week, silently haunting Diego during the day when Vanya is at rehearsal and staying in with Vanya the rest of the time. Vanya is so concerned for a time that she stops vigilante-ing entirely for about a week, until Klaus shows up soaking wet on her doorstep with a bag of Griddy’s donuts and chinese and a tip on a some asshole using school kids to push these edibles and he would take care of it himself, but… 

And so she starts back out on the streets, and Klaus starts living part-time at her apartment, essentially. It works out surprisingly well; they were worried that Five’s pride would be hurt since Klaus was essentially a babysitter, but it turns out that Klaus is both helpless enough and frustrating (familiar) enough that he didn’t feel like he was being babied. Thank God. And Klaus takes the hit to his social life, and the revelations of Vanya’s powers, with surprising grace and so there’s nothing to really complain about. So Klaus comes over whenever Vanya is out being the White Violin, which is often enough that he’ll forget some stuff, and his living situation is so unstable that he starts leaving them there on purpose. Then, he starts to show up even when Vanya isn’t going out, and he’s so skinny and pathetic (and their brother) that they feed him and spend time with him and let him become their eccentric cat that comes in as it pleases. And before they know it him sleeping over when Vanya stays out late turns into sleeping over whenever the weather is bad, then it’s whenever he needs a safe landing, and suddenly Five is only with Diego three days a week because he’s is content to stay inside with the internet and some books and devour the last twelve years, and Klaus is there if he needs him. 

Eventually Five’s icy demeanor starts to crack, and some of the trauma starts to peek through. At first it’s purely apocalypse related trauma, and it was a doozy to process for them so he can only imagine how Five feels. He starts to obsess over their food scraps, insisting that they not put anything to waste. It’s smart, and Vanya is trying to save up anyway to get a real bed for Five and a new apartment, so she mostly humors him, although she draws the line at drinking the green bean juice. So then he starts to look up ways to use the things she won’t let him eat, like green bean juice, which give them a nice little balcony garden, but also spirals into other kinds of ‘apocalypse-proofing’. Vanya tries to redirect him away from the very-expensive titanium food storage bin and onto other things, like field medicine, but Five on a bender was never swayed for long, and only dug himself into a miniature frenzy. This is about the time that they take him to the grocery store and he has a minor panic attack over the many different brands of Peanut Butter, and that’s when they know it’s time to buckle down and do something about it. 

Five reacts to the therapist about as well as they expected all of this to go over, so not well at all. In fact, it’s like he has been storing his outrage until he felt more sure they wouldn’t disappear, which was apparently now. Still, Vanya held firm, and dragged him there herself and then sat in the lobby so that he couldn’t warp away without abandoning her. For the first session he stormed out a third of the way through, only for Vanya to march him back in there. The second session is about the same. For the third session he stays put for the whole thing, but comes out looking surly and is a bigger pain in the ass then ever at dinner that night. Diego worries that they made a wrong decision, they know how arrogant Five could be of course it would feel condescending to have them force him to go to a therapist. But Vanya sticks to her guns, emboldened by her knowledge of how therapy has helped her. And sure enough, while he walks out of the fourth session somber, he doesn’t throw any tantrums. And when he exits the fifth session surly but teary eyed it feels like they’ve passed a crossroads of sorts, and made it out the otherside alive. 

He settles down a bit, at least where the apocalypse planning is concerned. Instead he seems to put all of his energy into another area even little Number Five was known for: spite. He invests all of his energy in learning all of the things their dad would  _ hate _ : he watches trashy reality Television shows with Klaus, becomes slightly obsessed with Eastern religions for a while, reads a score of Young Adult fiction novels which serves to weasel his way into the hearts of all Librarians in a 10 mile radius and a neat introduction to the local 4H club and  _ of course _ the little twerp loves the 4H club. They are completely enamored with his mini garden, and he single-handedly completely reorients their recycling efforts and starts tracking recycling rates by burrough and street because “I didn’t come back to stop the apocalypse in 2019 only to have an apocalypse in 2040.” 

“I think it’s cute how dedicated he is.” Says Eudora over her lunch break because Five has tricked her with stories of Diego’s childhood dumbassery. 

“He’s being a smartass is what he is.”

“Yeah, a cute smartass.” 

Not to be left behind, Klaus starts to change too. He has been reluctant to bring hard drugs into Vanya’s apartment, it’s a line he doesn’t want to cross. But maybe it’s the stability of their mishmashed family environment or some kind of deep buried sense of shame, but one day he starts slinking around and being oddly evasive, and the next week he lays an envelope of cash on the kitchen table. 

“Ty needed to get the cops off of his backs, so I agreed to profile the local dealers for him if he paid me under the table.” 

And while that seemed big enough, it was not the end of it. Maybe it was because they spent so much time together, or maybe it was because Five’s recycling project was running smoothly and he needed a passion project, but one day Five starts growing sage in his garden. Then these little crystals started popping up all over the apartment by the exits. Then, as if a dam was opened, he walked into the apartment and was overwhelmed with an overwhelming smell that made his home itch. 

“I would rather burn incense, but we have to wait until summer so that we can open the windows or else the fire alarm will go off and Vanya will lose the safety deposit. But essential oils have  _ some _ purification properties that are worth testing.” 

He feels like he should say something: most of that stuff is mumbo jumbo, my nose is on fire could you turn it down a bit, maybe try something other than peppermint next time… But he can see how Klaus is stretched out and relaxed and...well not sober, but  _ far _ less high than usual and Diego with all of the tact he has learned over the last year and a half shuts his goddamn mouth. Five seems to take that as some kind of approval, because after that every week when he comes over Five and Klaus are testing new methods of ghost warding, various talismans and gems and jewelry. 

“Most of it doesn’t  _ naturally _ have any ghost warding properties, if ghosts really want to get in they still can, which is nice because when Ben isn’t around I go a little coo-coo, ya know? But it seems some of them are signals that they aren’t welcome and so they stay away.” 

“Huh.” 

“Wait, wait, wait, Ben is here?” 

“Klaus can see ghosts of course Ben is here.”

So yeah, slowly, piece by piece, they are putting themselves back to the way they should have been all along. 

\---------------------------------------

2 years later when Eudora tells Vanya and Diego of a new vigilante on the scene they don’t go out and hunt them down, or scope out the night for them they way they did before. Instead they wait up with Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Sandwiches, coffee, donuts, and an expression carefully learned from Burton for situations just like these. 

“I’m eighteen now you can’t make me stop.” Vanya raises a single eyebrow at him. Diego just takes a big sip of his coffee, and Eudora gives a quiet ‘hmm’ under her breath. “I’m an adult now, I have my GED and I’m going to college and I have the training and the ability and the  _ responsibility _ to help people. How am I supposed to just  _ stand by _ when I know everything that I do? What’s the point of stopping the apocalypse if everyone is miserable! I can’t-” 

As Five rants he can feel himself softening, some sort of weight lifting: he wasn’t doing this because he felt he had to. Well, he did, but not because he felt his  _ worth _ was pinned on it like before. Eudora grabs his hand over the table and smiles at him. He’s doing this because he  _ cares _ about people, cares about people more than he cares about his own little world, and really that’s proof that they did something right, isn’t it? That somewhere along the way their piecemeal little group of policeman and superheroes and therapists and outcasts managed to teach him how to be generous and kind and noble. Vanya stands up and lays a hand on his cheek, and Five stops his rant to wait for her. 

“It would be hypocritical for any of us to stop you from doing this. Just...don’t forget to be happy okay? You’re worth more than the good you put into the world, take care of yourself first, and then use what’s left over to save the world, alright? And don’t you dare shut us out.” 

For all his bluster before, Five doesn’t use words now, just nods and then sits down and accepts their peace offering. The White Violin, the Black Dagger, The Warp, The Snitch, and all the people that stood behind them. Maybe it isn’t the way it could have been, maybe not even the way it  _ should _ be, but for them it was just right. 


End file.
